House of Lords: Right to Vote

Lord Dubs: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	Whether they will introduce legislation before the next general election to enable Members of the House to have the right to vote in a general election.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, the Government have no plans to do so.

Lord Dubs: My Lords, does my noble friend accept the principle of no taxation without representation and will she perhaps join me in a little tea party to discuss this further? Will she also confirm that the basis for Members of this House being denied the right to vote in general elections stems not from statute but from a resolution passed by the House of Commons in 1699?

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I can think of nothing nicer than a tea party with my noble friend, and I accept immediately that invitation. I would not try to second-guess his knowledge of the history of the resolution of 1699, but I would just say that the White Paper on House of Lords reform recommended that Members of the reformed House of Lords should be able to vote in all elections.

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: My Lords, surely Members of this House are their own representatives in Parliament, so why would they want to vote for a representative in Parliament?

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, the noble Lord goes to the nub of the debate that has been going on since 1699.

The Lord Bishop of Chester: My Lords, Members of the House may not be aware that those on the Bishops' Benches can vote in general elections. We are here only in a spiritual capacity; that is why we retire. However, the last known instance of a Bishop voting was when Archbishop Runcie could not resist the opportunity to vote against Mrs Thatcher. He was found out and apologised thereafter. Does the Minister agree that the fact that we have exercised this restraint over the years indicates that to have the vote might in its own way undermine the authority of the House?

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, the right reverend Prelate raises an important point. However, as part of the package of measures that noble Lords are deliberating on both in the committee that is meeting my right honourable friend the Leader of the House of Commons and in other ways, it is something that we should debate and seriously consider.

Lord Howarth of Newport: My Lords, while many of us might be glad to be able to vote like our fellow citizens in elections to the House of Commons, many of us would not wish to vote in another general election to the second Chamber because we take the view that it would not be in the interests of democracy and good governance that there should be an elected second Chamber in this country. Will the Government take full account of this view, which is widely held on all sides of this House as well as among growing numbers of people in the House of Commons and in the country?

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, the vote in the other place demonstrated that the views of the other place were firmly either for 80 per cent or 100 per cent elected. Noble Lords need no reminding of the measure of that vote or indeed, as my noble friend said, of the vote in your Lordships' House. The next stage is for us to consider the implications of these votes and reach, if we possibly can, consensus between the two Houses.

Lord Maclennan of Rogart: My Lords, as the Government are anxious to maintain the primacy of another place, does the noble Baroness not see that there is an argument that as citizens we should have some right to influence the composition of the Chamber that has primacy?

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, the noble Lord makes an extremely good point, and I pay tribute to the work that he has done over many years on constitutional reform. Indeed, many noble Lords personally and privately feel very strongly that it is important to be able to exercise rights as citizens.

Baroness Whitaker: My Lords, which is likely to come first: votes for convicted prisoners or votes for Members of this House?

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, as my noble friend will know, the Government have been consulting on the first stage of a consultation process to deal with the question of allowing convicted prisoners to vote. The case of Hirst v UK was heard in the European Court. Noble Lords will shortly see the results of that first consultation and at that point will be able to gauge whether my noble friend is right.

Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, does the Minister accept that there is no connection whatever between the question of the composition of this House, which is an important issue, and whether Members of the second Chamber should be able to vote in elections for the first Chamber? Can she name any other democracy, regardless of the composition of its upper Chamber—whether elected, as in many, or appointed, as in Canada—where the Members cannot vote in elections for the first Chamber?

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I know of no other jurisdiction. That does not mean that none exists. I have looked at something like 60 or 70 other jurisdictions—out of personal interest, sadly—to see what happens in second Chambers. I agree that they are separate issues, but noble Lords will accept that whenever we have debated the separate issues of the role and membership of your Lordships' House, we quickly get into broader issues of composition, powers, conventions and so on.

The Earl of Erroll: My Lords, would the problem of being taxed without representation be solved by the Lords being given powers properly to scrutinise and vote on money Bills? They are extremely complex and could well be improved by proper scrutiny in the second Chamber.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, whether it is appropriate for the second Chamber to do so, and, if so, in what way, has been discussed and debated in the committee. We will await those deliberations.

Lord Paul: My Lords, one problem today is that a number of eligible voters are not voting. Could the Minister not suggest that the Peers who want to vote request that those people vote and canvass for that?

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, it is important that those who are part of our democracy exercise their right to democracy. We have debated this question many times in your Lordships' House and are all in agreement that voting is important.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, the Minister mentioned that the House of Commons and some Members of this House have voted for a 100 per cent elected second Chamber. In that case, would she not agree that, in matters of finance and taxation, the House of Commons would find it necessary to share power with the second Chamber, which of course it does not at the moment?

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, this is all part of the broader debate about the role of the second Chamber, the role of your Lordships' House, the relationship between the House of Commons and your Lordships' House, and so on. They are important deliberations to have, but we must do so on the basis of the committee's work and the statements that will come from my right honourable friend.

Lord Dubs: My Lords, does my noble friend accept that the argument for dealing with our right to vote should be dealt with separately from the main legislation? That stems from the fact, if I am right in my historical assessment, that it does not require legislation to give us a vote, but a simple resolution of the House of Commons.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I am not taking issue with my noble friend's analysis, but with the fact that in any of the debates in which I have participated in your Lordships' House on any aspect of the relationship between your Lordships' House, another place, the country and the democracy, one quickly finds oneself in a debate on broader issues. Trying to think more constructively and strategically about those issues eventually takes us to a better place.

Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee

Lord McNally: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	Whether they have issued guidance to government departments that, in the event that a report from the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee expresses serious criticism of a statutory instrument laid before Parliament, they should consider the option of withdrawing or revoking the instrument and relaying it in amended form.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, all government departments are aware of the valuable work done by the Merits Committee. They take its recommendations seriously and, faced with a critical report, will consider all options, including the possible amendment or withdrawal of the instrument.

Lord McNally: My Lords, does the Minister recall that when this issue was last raised, both the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor and the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, got the vapours about the fact that Liberal Democrats had opposed three out of more than 3,000 statutory instruments? The problem remains that we have only a nuclear option against statutory instruments. Both the Cunningham committee and the Merits Committee have drawn attention to that. We now have an excellent committee. Is it not time to give it just a few teeth?

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I am not sure that my noble and learned friend got the vapours. However, the committee is indeed excellent, and I have responsibility for liaising between it and government departments. As Governments increasingly and rightly use secondary legislation to ensure the flexibility that we need in developing policy, it is important that we are able to ensure that the role and work of the committee are recognised and valued. To that end, I am in discussion with government departments.

Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, the noble Baroness said that the committee does vital work and the Government listen carefully to it, but I do not think that that is true at all. Time and again, the Merits Committee has advised the Government to take a different course of action and has been ignored, most recently on housing information packs, which we now hear are to be reintroduced. Could the noble Baroness not rethink her Answer? If she means that the Government are going to listen, should they not take forward the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, which seems the right way forward?

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I had a personal bet on how long it would be before home improvement packs were mentioned, and I think I win. I do not agree with the noble Lord's analysis about the number of times that issues raised by the committee have been ignored by the Government or have not received a positive response from them. The committee's analysis demonstrates that it provides excellent work to your Lordships' House. It does ask the Government to think again, but its remit to look at legal, policy and political issues means that, in turn, the Government must respond, and they do. They recognise what the committee has said, but also put arguments forward for why they should not make the changes the committee recommends.

Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, as an ex-Chief Whip, I want to make certain that the convention of not voting against statutory instruments is continued. However, if the Government are not going to listen to the Merits Committee, more fatal Motions will be put down against statutory instruments in this House, and the convention will be blown.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I hope that the convention is not blown. It is important that in discussions on primary legislation, we have the opportunity to consider the value and role of statutory instruments. The Delegated Powers Committee, too, plays a vital role in your Lordships' House in putting forward proposals and suggestions on what is appropriately done within statutory instruments that the Government take forward. None the less, it is important that the Government look at the work of the Merits Committee. As I indicated, I am in dialogue with the committee and government departments to make sure that that happens properly, but it does not necessarily mean that the Government should change their view.

Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, does the Minister accept that secondary legislation is the wrong place to develop policy; that this Government have been adept at producing framework Bills in which the policy is developed through statutory instruments; and that that is the wrong way to proceed?

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, this is a fundamental debate about the role of primary and secondary legislation. It is clear that the secondary legislation option gives us the flexibility to review how legislation is working effectively, to make changes in the light of experience, which noble Lords would want, and not to have to wait for primary legislation. The critical issue is how well, in our debates on primary legislation, we understand what the secondary legislation will do so that when faced with the proposition that comes forward, noble Lords can make the decision yes or no.

Viscount Bledisloe: My Lords, does the Minister recognise that if her praise for the value of the Merits Committee's reports is anything other than lip service, the following must happen? If the committee produces a critical report, either the instrument has to be withdrawn and relaid, or the Government must publish publicly their reasons for going ahead notwithstanding the Merits Committee's report, and that has to be debated so that the House can decide whether it believes the Government or the Merits Committee.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, there are many ways in which government departments can respond. The Merits Committee has just published correspondence and will be formally responding to me on it by the autumn, I gather. I have asked departments to consider three things in particular: making a member of top management responsible for the effectiveness and efficiency of preparing statutory instruments; their scope for producing detailed management plans for secondary legislation; and their scope for more informal consolidations or better guidance to help those affected by it. Those practical suggestions that I have made to government departments will enhance the opportunities for statutory instruments.

Lord McNally: My Lords, do the Government not frequently place this House in a Catch-22 situation? During the passage of primary legislation, Ministers often get a proposal through by saying that the Government will only bring it forward in secondary legislation that must pass through both Houses, but when one House exercises its right not to pass it, particularly this House, the Government then cry "foul" or "constitutional outrage", among other things. Would it not be more honest to say that secondary legislation need go only through the Commons, or to accept that occasionally this House has the right to say no?

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I read with great interest the speech made by the noble Lord at the end of the debate on casinos, when he talked about the role of the Whips. From his time as an adviser in government, he well remembers the regrouping process that takes place when the Government are defeated. I am not going to take any lessons on that, nor shall I give the noble Lord any. I do not believe that this House is in a Catch-22 position. As a Minister who has taken quite a large number of Bills through your Lordships' House, I am mindful of what I say about secondary legislation. I have always been held to account on what it might cover, and I believe that I and all my noble colleagues have brought forward precisely what we have said we will bring forward. It is for this House to make its decisions.

Crime: Rape

Lord Campbell-Savours: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What proposals they have for increasing the number of convictions for the offence of rape.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, the Government have overhauled the law on sexual offences, introduced specialist officers and prosecutors and consulted on changes to the legal system to help build better cases. We are supporting police forces and the CPS to implement recommendations from the 2007 rape inspection and are monitoring performance closely. This year, the Home Office is investing a further £3 million in supporting victims, including through the criminal justice process.

Lord Campbell-Savours: My Lords, why is it that while reported rape conviction rates in the UK are 5.3 per cent, in New Zealand they are 22 per cent; in Belgium, 16 per cent; Finland, 16 per cent; Israel, 16 per cent; Switzerland, 15 per cent; and in Germany, 23 per cent—four times the UK rate? The list goes on, and we are still trawling the world. Could the answer be that the law overseas accepts varying degrees of offence and penalty; that some countries use judges and experienced assessors and not juries; and the rejection of approaches such as those from a very powerful women's lobby in the United Kingdom which is blocking reform of the law and yet not thinking the case through properly?

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, there are varying degrees of cases in various other countries because they have different systems of judicial and criminal law. Our system needs improvement and a lot of work is being done to make it. We will of course look at international experience to assist us in that.

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, bearing in mind that 50 per cent of the rape cases brought to trial end in conviction, does the noble Baroness agree that the jury system is working extremely well in rape cases?

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, the jury system has certainly served us well. However, in looking at the review, we have to look at how we can better assist the jury to come to the best-informed decision.

Baroness Gale: My Lords, does my noble friend agree—I am sure she does—that although increasing the number of rape convictions is very important, it is equally important to try to reduce the number of rapes? It is estimated that about 80,000 rapes occur in this country every year. Will she support a public education campaign to educate men and boys, first, to respect women and girls and, secondly, to accept that all forms of violence against women, including rape, must stop? Such violence in today's society, given that we call ourselves a civilised society, is totally unacceptable. If such a campaign were successful, we would not only see a reduction in the number of rapes but be able to claim to live in a much more equal society.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I agree with my noble friend how important it is that we reduce the number of rapes and assure her that much has already been done, in the citizenship programmes and the other programmes being rolled out in schools, to assist children to better understand how they should respond in their relationships. However, there is a duty on us all to try to create a situation in this country where violence against anyone, but especially violence against the vulnerable, is totally reprehensible and abhorred.

Lord Elystan-Morgan: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the real problem is not so much the rape cases that go to court but the rape cases that do not go to court, and that, although there may be a superficial temptation to widen the law on rape, or indeed to change that fine balance between prosecution and defence in rape cases, that might well have a counter-productive effect on the attitude of jurors? Perhaps the best service that can be done to women is to make the procedures of examination and investigation more humane and more sensitive.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, and reassure him that that is exactly what we are doing. It is of great regret that only 6 per cent of rape cases are reported. We have a huge difficulty, because many women feel such shame, hurt and distress at what has happened to them that they never tell anyone at all.

Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, does the Minister not agree that the great increase in drinking among the young—I certainly include girls in this—is really responsible for an awful lot of these accusations, if not the reality?

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, the noble Baroness is right that alcohol can play a part in this. This is why the Government's alcohol strategy and the work that we are doing with young people to help them better to understand what they are drinking are so very important.

Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, has the Minister evaluated the special measures that were brought in under recent legislation and their impact on convictions? There can be nothing worse for a woman who has been the victim of rape than to find that the perpetrator has been acquitted. The special measures may well put a barrier between the victim and the jury. I have heard it said that it sometimes looks like a television play when the victim gives evidence on television. What consideration has been given to that?

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, consideration has been given to that matter. The opportunity to use the special measures assists a number of women who would not otherwise have the courage to come forward and go through the process. Of course a balance must be struck, but we must listen to those victims and do what we properly can to make it possible for them to give their evidence.

Lord Faulkner of Worcester: My Lords, what progress has been made in implementing the recommendations of the report by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and the Crown Prosecution Service, which was published in 2005? As the Minister will recall, the report stated that the scale of false allegations was overestimated, that there was inconsistency over the way in which forensic doctors examined victims, that there was a lack of training for front-line officers, and that it was necessary for authorities to challenge claims of consent much more vigorously. What progress has been made in implementing the recommendations of this very important report?

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, a lot of work has been done. As a result, in April, the Government published a cross-departmental action plan on sexual violence and abuse. Improving the response of the criminal justice system to sexual offences is one of the three key objectives of the plan. That is being rolled out right across the country. There is monitoring, and there is assistance to forces and others who do this work. We therefore believe that we have a really good programme of work to achieve this improvement.

Olympic Games 2012: Logo

Lord Redesdale: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	Whether they will reconsider the choice of logo for the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games in view of the publicity generated by its unveiling on 4 June.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, the brand was developed by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. We believe that the new London 2012 brand will establish the character and identity of the 2012 Games, both nationally and internationally. The Government will not ask LOCOG to reconsider it.

Lord Redesdale: My Lords, given that a great deal of the financing will be underpinned by merchandising, much of which will be based on the logo, the public's response to the logo might give rise to the concern that the very large sums of running money that could be raised through merchandising might be lost and therefore might not be available to the Olympics. Will the Government consider an open competition so that the public could participate in looking for a logo that might meet with a good deal more public approval?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, as I indicated, the logo is the responsibility of LOCOG, not of the Government. The noble Lord will at least concede that the purpose of a logo is to identify the brand in question and bring it to everyone's attention. This brand has certainly drawn the nation's attention.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, why did it cost £400,000 to produce such an uninspiring logo?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, it may be uninspiring to some and inspiring to others. It is clear that the brand is meant to be a multi-media attraction. The noble Lord may have seen it only within the framework of a newspaper and the rather dated and static concept of the development of the logo. As for costs, LOCOG was concerned that a number of organisations should submit bids. This was the best bid; this is the result.

Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, does the Minister, or anyone, know what happened to the Millennium Dome logo? Is there not a lesson for us there?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I cannot recall the Millennium Dome logo attracting quite the degree of attention which this logo has done. Already it may have made a step forward towards its objectives.

Lord Addington: My Lords, what is the Minister's opinion on the failure to make sure photo-sensitive epileptics were considered in taking forward the programme? As a logo to cover the Paralympic Games also, this was rather an appalling oversight. Who is responsible for making sure that the company answers to this, and in what form should that take place?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, the Government and LOCOG share the noble Lord's concern about the logo's effect on epileptics—a small number admittedly—and the distress caused as a result of the programme which followed the launch. It is not caused by the logo; it is caused by the subsequent video. Those who developed the logo are responsible for commissioning that launch; therefore, they are taking up with the company that produced that presentation why it did not test it sufficiently to avoid this unfortunate, even catastrophic development for some people. Television companies also have some responsibility for not broadcasting anything which might cause similar distress.

Baroness Boothroyd: My Lords, how is the sum of £400,000 made up?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, that is a commercial agreement between LOCOG and the company which produced the logo. It is not out of keeping or out of step with the development of logos in a whole range of private activities. I emphasise that the taxpayer has not subsidised the logo; the cost comes out of the LOCOG budget, which it derives entirely from private resources.

Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, does the Minister accept that the purpose of a logo is not just, as he said, to bring public attention to the product but to say something about it? What does the 2012 Olympics logo say about the 2012 Olympics?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, it says that the Olympics will be held in 2012, although I am sure I am not alone in the House in having taken a little while to tumble to that fact when I first saw the logo. But I am assured it grows on one and I hope that it is growing on me.

Baroness Tonge: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the Olympics logo is a very good and very intriguing graffiti tag? Does he also agree that its effect as it spreads out all over London will be to make tagging respectable and that the less good graffiti artists will be discouraged from defacing our city?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am not sure that I can attest to that beneficial result of decreasing graffiti. The logo is certainly different from anything we have seen before or had anticipated. In that respect, it is thoroughly modern.

Lord Clarke of Hampstead: My Lords, does my noble friend recall when the Post Office brand was changed to Consignia? That happened quite a few years ago, but I think he was in his position then. Does he recall how much it cost to put the whole thing right after the public said that it did not want Consignia, it wanted the Post Office?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, as I recall, the Consignia logo was a failure. The 2012 Olympics logo is going to be a raging success.

Lord Elton: My Lords, does the noble Lord propose to give the same answer to a question about the changing of the logo on the tailfins of British Airways aircraft?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, we can all recall the history of failed attempts, but there have been striking successes too, not all of them forecast. We have no reason to expect that this logo will not hit its target, and I am sure that the whole House will join with me in this respect: it is important that we celebrate the fact that two years ago London won the bid for the Olympic Games. The nation looks forward to those Games being hugely successful.

Lord James of Blackheath: My Lords—

Lord Rooker: My Lords, I am sorry, but the time is up.

Corruption Bill [HL]

Read a third time, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

UK Borders Bill

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Last summer, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary launched a comprehensive review of the immigration system. The future approach for the Home Office, in promoting good migration and tackling immigration, was subsequently set out in the Immigration and Nationality Directorate review published in July 2006. During the review, my honourable friends the Minister of State for Immigration, Nationality and Citizenship and the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State travelled extensively throughout the United Kingdom, talking and listening to staff on the front line, as well as local businesses and public service providers. All of this very valuable work led to a fivefold strategy for reform. This includes the first ever cross-government strategy to ensure compliance with our immigration laws; secondly, new resources for enforcement; thirdly, the use of new technology to count people in and out of the country; fourthly, an international strategy to share information and build closer working relationships; and finally, this Bill.
	Careful consideration has been given to these measures to ensure that we achieve the Home Office's priorities of protecting the public and creating an immigration system that is transparent for those who are eligible to remain in the United Kingdom, and that our immigration officers have the power to deal with those who flout immigration laws. There are four key principles that have determined the content of the Bill. The first is further to strengthen our borders, with additional powers for front-line staff; secondly, to deter and detect the perpetrators of immigration crime; thirdly, to deport and restrict those who abuse our hospitality; and, fourthly, to lay a foundation for the Border and Immigration Agency to improve its service to the public.
	The Home Office is working towards a stronger and more visible presence at the border by, for example, the introduction of uniforms for front-line immigration officers by September this year. Clauses 1 to 4 introduce a new power for designated immigration officers to detain for up to three hours any person liable to arrest, or who is the subject of an arrest warrant, until a police officer arrives. This would include British citizens liable for arrest for non immigration-related offences. Not only will this new function support police activity at ports, but it will also contribute to the objectives of the border management programme, to deliver a cohesive and integrated border security infrastructure. Further measures in the Bill designed to secure our borders include those on facilitation and trafficking.
	A high proportion of illegal immigration into the United Kingdom is in the hands of traffickers and people smugglers. Clauses 28 to 30 are therefore designed to strengthen our enforcement capability in respect of facilitation and trafficking offences. The provisions clarify at what point an individual will be taken to have facilitated the arrival of an asylum seeker into the United Kingdom and, most importantly, extend our powers to enable the prosecution of those who facilitate or traffic from abroad.
	It is essential that front-line staff have the right powers and that the effective use of those powers acts as a deterrent to potential offenders. Measures in the Bill include new powers to seize cash under the Proceeds of Crime Act where there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that it has been obtained through, or is intended for use in connection with, unlawful activity under the immigration Acts. This will target those who seek to profit from committing criminal offences and breaching immigration laws. There are also powers to dispose of property seized as part of a criminal investigation, which will have the added effect of removing forgeries and forgery-making equipment from the black market.
	Clauses 39 to 42 introduce a new data-sharing gateway between the Border and Immigration Agency, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office. These measures also extend the existing powers of the police and the Serious Organised Crime Agency to share information with the Border and Immigration Agency. These gateways are an essential requirement for effective cross-government working in the fight against illegal migrant working and benefit fraud and to ensure that robust immigration decisions are made.
	I can reassure the House that the data-sharing gateway will not allow for the unchecked exchange of confidential tax information. I am confident that we are putting in place the necessary safeguards to protect the public's data, including a criminal sanction for any unlawful disclosure of information.
	The Bill also contains a power of arrest for the new offence of knowingly employing an illegal worker, which links back to the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006. That Act set out a civil penalty regime in respect of illegal working offences and, as we crack down harder on employers who flout the immigration laws, we must also provide the necessary tools and support to enable them to comply with our rules and laws. That is why the Bill introduces a new requirement for those subject to immigration control to register for a biometric immigration document. There are currently around 50 old and insecure immigration documents in circulation. It is unreasonable to expect employers and benefit providers to be able to recognise them all to a degree that would allow a clear judgment on authenticity. The biometric provisions will therefore allow us to phase out the old, insecure documents and replace them with a single, secure, identifiable biometric document. Employers and benefit providers will be able to check this biometric document and know whether a person is here legally and is entitled to work and/or to access benefits.
	It is vital that the Border and Immigration Agency takes full advantage of such technological advances in order effectively to manage not only those who are here lawfully but also those who no longer have the right to be here. As my honourable friend the Minister of State for Immigration, Nationality and Citizenship, Liam Byrne, said during the Public Bill Committee in another place,
	"there will never be any substitute for an immigration officer. We consistently provide immigration officers with the resources, the training and the powers to undertake the roles that they play with the professionalism that they bring to their job, but where there are tools that will help them to conduct that work more effectively, particularly to help establish people's identity, we should use them".—[Official Report, Commons UK Borders Bill Public Bill Committee, 27/2/07; col. 20.]
	While I believe that the framework for the biometric registration scheme is sound, I appreciate that noble Lords will want to spend time in Committee looking at the detail of these clauses, and I look forward to listening to what I anticipate to be the many and varied views that will be expressed about them.
	In its recent report on the Bill, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee made several recommendations in relation to the detail of the biometric clauses, and we are seriously considering how best to address its concerns. I emphasise that the Government do not view the biometric immigration document as a tool for discrimination. A government amendment was made to these clauses in the other place to state explicitly in the Bill that it will not be compulsory for the document to be carried at all times. I will be placing in the Libraries of both Houses a draft code of practice for the operation of the civil penalty regime. That is the code referred to in Clause 13 of the Bill.
	I come now to the third principle of the Bill: deporting and restricting those who have abused our hospitality. Clauses 31 to 38 introduce automatic deportation for foreign national prisoners. Under these measures, subject always to human rights considerations, the Secretary of State must make a deportation order in cases where an adult foreign national has been sentenced to 12 months or more in prison, or is handed down a custodial sentence of any length for an offence listed in the order made under Section 72 of the 2002 Act. Automatic deportation will apply to all foreign criminals who fall within the threshold, save for where one of a limited number of exceptions applies. In-country appeals will be restricted to human rights claims unless those claims are unfounded.
	For those criminals not covered by the provisions in the Bill, court-recommended and discretionary deportation will remain to allow flexibility in the system. For those who have committed serious crimes in the United Kingdom but whose removal would breach international obligations, we are introducing reporting and/or residency restrictions. Those conditions will also be used to improve contact with those former unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who have been granted discretionary leave due to poor reception arrangements in their country of origin. It will further be used to improve contact with other children who have been granted leave but who we have reason to believe may be at risk.
	The fourth principle behind the Bill is that of laying the foundations for the ongoing improvements of the Border and Immigration Agency. In April 2007 the Immigration and Nationality Directorate became the shadow Border and Immigration Agency. With increasing flexibility in the way the agency conducts its operations, it is vital that there is an independent monitoring mechanism in place to oversee the agency's work. In December 2006 the Home Office launched a consultation on the proposal to establish a new single inspectorate for the Border and Immigration Agency, and responses to the consultation revealed strong support for that proposal. Therefore, Clauses 47 to 55 create a new chief inspector of the Border and Immigration Agency who will be responsible for monitoring and reporting on the efficiency and effectiveness of the agency. These provisions aim to rationalise some of the existing and somewhat disparate regulators and inspectorates, and establish a chief inspector who will primarily oversee the agency's processes. The chief inspector will help ensure consistency of standards regionally across the Border and Immigration Agency. The provisions will provide the public with confidence that the immigration system is being overseen in a rational and independent way at all levels.
	Before I conclude, I should like to touch on an issue that I know noble Lords are passionate about, and which I am sure we will have the opportunity to discuss further in this and future debates. I refer to the safety of children. It was raised by Members in another place and by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. A number of your Lordships have raised questions about whether the Border and Immigration Agency should be subject to Section 11 of the Children Act 2004. I reassure the House, as have others before me, that the Border and Immigration Agency takes its responsibility towards children extremely seriously.
	In two weeks' time the agency will be publishing the objectives of its framework to keep children safe, which have been developed alongside the plans of the Department for Education and Skills for the Government's stay safe strategy. This will provide a more robust strategy to help ensure that children with whom the agency's staff come into contact are kept safe.
	Our framework will provide the basis of our approach to keeping children safe, and form part of an overall package of measures. Feeding into this strategy will be the evaluation of the Section 9 pilot and findings from our review of family removals processes.
	My role here today is to listen to your Lordships' concerns on keeping children safe, take them away and seek to address them in our framework and in Committee. I promise to give due consideration to all the arguments aired today. I wanted to say this at the beginning of our deliberations so that noble Lords were aware of our direction of travel. They would then be free to make their contribution, which we would be able to add to our deliberations before coming forward with the final suggestions.
	It is essential that the agency is in a position to manage an immigration system that is fair and effective, and that controls immigration for the benefit of Britain. The Bill is a key element in delivering this. I commend the Bill to the House.
	Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Baroness Scotland of Asthal.)

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: My Lords, when the Minister in charge of the Bill, Mr Byrne, introduced it in another place, he began by making the defensive plea that it should not be dismissed as another immigration Bill. But nothing that the Government have done since then, way back in February, has given it more credibility than a patch and mend job.
	This is the fifth immigration Bill that the Government have introduced in less than 10 years—indeed, the sixth, if one includes the Special Immigration Appeals Commission Act 1997. We await with bated breath the publication of the consolidation Bill next year. If passing legislation were the answer to making our borders more secure, we would have the safest and most secure immigration system in the world. But it doesn't and we don't.
	Last year, the Home Secretary described the Immigration and Nationality Directorate as "not fit for purpose", but he is retiring from the front line before he has solved the problems. Putting a series of management targets and organograms in place does not deal with the issue fundamentally.
	What has happened in the real world of immigration and the Home Office this past year? At Harmondsworth, the inmates rioted and 150 immigration detainees were bailed or freed from the immigration estate. The head of removals at the IND stated that it did not have the faintest idea how many people were living in the UK illegally. The Home Secretary admitted that there are as many as 450,000 failed asylum seekers resident in the UK. There have been accusations of corruption at Lunar House, the IND's office, and that senior workers were demanding sex from an 18 year-old girl in return for granting asylum. It was discovered that one of those working at Lunar House was a member of an extremist Islamist group, unchecked by the Home Office. It was discovered that the Home Office itself was involved in employing illegal workers from a subcontractor.
	Against the backdrop of this litany of failings, we have before us a Bill that gathers together a number of disparate measures to keep track of who should be here, deport those who should not and deal more effectively with those who employ illegal persons. When the Bill introduces sensible measures, it will have our support; the problem is that even those measures that appear at first sight to have merit will need some amendment to achieve the Government's stated objective. For example, we support the extension of powers given to immigration officers with regard to detention at ports, as the Minister set out, but at the moment it seems inadequate to meet the scale of the problems faced at our ports and airports. In Committee in another place, the Government improved the Bill by introducing a section establishing the Border and Immigration Inspectorate, which was broadly welcome, but it needs to be improved further by an extension of the powers of the chief inspector to deal with individual cases.
	The Minister has talked about the issues surrounding biometric registration, and she is right to realise that the House will want to examine in some detail the clauses that deal with that matter. During the exchange between the two Houses on the Identity Cards Act, I made it clear that we would not oppose the introduction of powers to require those subject to immigration control to apply for a document that records their biometrics—and we do not oppose it. Our opposition centred on the use of the national identity register more widely with regard to British citizens, and the compulsion on British citizens to apply for an ID card and register on the NIR when all they really want is a passport.
	We shall need to be convinced that the measures in this Bill will be effective, cost-effective and proportionate. The problem is that, so far, much is left by the Government to secondary legislation. Will the Minister deal with the point raised by Liberty, which cannot see how the creation of a biometric registration document is an effective method of dealing with people living in this country without the right of residence or work? Employers already face legal obligations under the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 and they are obliged to make document checks. Liberty says that it is not aware that there is a significant problem with employers being besieged by fraudulent employees with fake documents. It would be helpful if the Government could clarify if there is such a problem and, if so, what evidence there is for that.
	On the treatment of claimants, we welcome the requirement for people granted limited leave to remain to report to an immigration officer, but the debates in Committee in another place reveal that those clauses too may need some amendment so that they apply effectively to those whom the Government intend to target—predominantly, we are told, foreign national prisoners whom the Government cannot remove. We have no objections in principle to the changes in support for asylum seekers, but we shall have questions in Grand Committee about the removal of the right to present new evidence at the appeal stage of an immigration hearing. The Minister will be aware that strong arguments have been advanced by lobby groups against the reduction of appeal rights.
	The Minister's remarks on trafficking measures are most welcome, as they always are. The extension of measures to tackle people trafficking are a welcome addition to the powers in the 2004 Act, but we would like to look very carefully—although we will just be probing—at whether the treatment of those who claim that they have been trafficked is all that it should be. I know that that has been a matter of considerable concern around the House during the consideration of the many Bills on these matters.
	One of the weakest sections of the Bill is that which purports to deal with the automatic deportation of criminals. A year ago, the outgoing Prime Minister promised that the system would be "radically overhauled" so that those who are convicted of a serious criminal offence were deported automatically. Naturally, I took the Prime Minister at his word—always a disappointing thing to do—and tried to help him, as I always do, by inserting into the Violent Crime Reduction Bill, which happened to be before this House at the time, an amendment to enable the automatic deportation of serious criminals at the end of their sentence. Surprise, surprise, the Government voted against my modest amendment.
	Now we have before us the Government's version of deporting foreign criminals, which seems to consist of measures that provide for deportation except when it is going to be too difficult to do so. The Immigration Advisory Service pointed out in its briefing that this part of the Bill does not give the Home Secretary any powers that he does not already have. All the relevant factors can be considered under the present rules relating to deportation and the Secretary of State can deport those whose presence is not conducive to the public good. There already exists a rebuttable presumption in favour of deportation.
	An additional problem is that the Bill is silent on important matters. We shall table amendments to ensure that they are debated. The first, child safety, was most courteously referred to by the Minister. I welcome what she said. The House will appreciate that she has been able to go only a little way along the journey that we may persuade her to take. I am sure that she will find the House constructive, not destructive in the way that it tackles this matter. The safety of children is paramount.
	The Bill should enhance child safety. It is right to extend the duty under Section 11 of the Children Act 2004 to make arrangements to safeguard and promote children's welfare to those who provide services to refugee children and families. We have in mind specifically immigration removal centres, the National Asylum Support Service and those dealing with refugee children at ports of entry. My honourable and right honourable friends in another place tabled an amendment on Report on which they felt so strongly that they divided the House. As I am afraid is always the case in another place, they were unsuccessful in persuading sufficient Members to enable it to pass. We hope that we shall have better fortune in this House if the Government are ready to be persuaded. I thank the Refugee Children's Consortium for meeting me last week to discuss this matter. I made it clear that my priority is to ensure that the Bill should contain this improvement based very firmly on that amendment.
	The second matter on which the Bill is silent is that of a border police force. We urge the Government to reconsider their rejection of our plans for such a force. If they cannot bear to take our advice, they might at least listen to senior police officers. Sir Chris Fox, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said in 2005:
	"I think we should have a group of people that are made up of Police Officers, Special Branch, Immigration Officers and Customs, who have a total responsibility for all our points of entry".
	Sir Ian Blair said on 6 February 2005:
	"When we go into the debate about SOCA"—
	the serious organised crime Act—
	"it surprised me that we did not have a national border police".
	A policy to have a border police force is cross-party. I am aware that the Liberal Democrats have espoused it and that it was recommended by the Select Committee on Home Affairs in another place. It is not too late for the Government to think again.
	On marriage visas, the Government have failed to tackle the abuse of the spouse visa system. We shall try to assist them to do better by tabling amendments to the Bill that would tighten the rules on marriage visas. It is clear that very young women can be exploited and need better protection. We shall table probing amendments to enable debate that we hope will form part of the consultation process that we have launched on this important and sensitive issue.
	There is, indeed, much work to do in Grand Committee. The Bill is a long way from being perfect, or even very good. It certainly does not face up to the scale of the crisis confronting our immigration system. It is vital that we develop safe and secure borders and an immigration system that is once again fit for purpose. These Benches look forward to playing our part in making that happen.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, first, I register a protest at the decision to shunt this Bill off into Grand Committee, as happened with the 2006 Act, as the noble Baroness may recall. We disagree fundamentally with the principle that controversial legislation should be put into Grand Committee. In her references to children, delegated powers and automatic deportation, the noble Baroness recognised that this Bill is, indeed, highly controversial and will require a great deal of scrutiny by your Lordships. The place to do that is on the Floor of the House and not in Grand Committee. We particularly object to the manner in which that was done, again by agreement between the Government and the Tories, without consultation with the Liberal Democrats. They did not even have the courtesy to inform us directly, but left it to the Tories to tell us, which is not quite the way in which to secure our co-operation.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: My Lords, before the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, goes any further, I understand his passion and I understand his objections. I wonder whether he might wish to consult. I received advice last week that agreement had been reached with the Liberal Democrats as well. I would not wish to say—I hate to say this in front of the right reverend Prelates, but I hope they will accept it in the manner in which it is intended—that that is the gospel version, but I understood that a resolution had been achieved. I perfectly well understand that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, might have a principled objection.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, I was not going to mention this, but it was the noble Baroness who gave me and my noble friend Lord Dholakia the information, and that was the first that we heard about it. We did not know anything about it, and our Whips told us that they did not get the information in time to notify us before our meeting with the noble Baroness. My objection is not primarily the way in which the decision was notified, but the fact that we are going to have to take the Bill in Grand Committee.
	The number of asylum applicants has fallen, the rate of initial decisions has improved and the number of appeals determined has increased. The tabloid scare over the number of Romanians and Bulgarians flooding into Britain to steal jobs and undermine wages was a false alarm, and many of the people who came from the A8 accession countries in 2004 have now gone home. The Immigration Service—or the BIA, as we must learn to call it in line with new Labour's mania for regularly rebranding public agencies to keep printers and designers in work—has not been so successful in removing failed asylum seekers primarily because of the panic over foreign national prisoners, to which I shall come in a few minutes.
	The Bill creates a number of new immigration offences and encourages the courts to impose sentences of at least a year on persons convicted of a range of non-immigration offences specified under Section 72 of the 2002 Act, so that the offenders can be deported automatically without a hearing. The new offence of assaulting an immigration officer is duplicated in Clauses 3 and 21, according to whether he is exercising the power to detain, and in both clauses it is punishable by imprisonment of up to 51 weeks, except in Northern Ireland where it remains six months, the maximum under existing law for common assault or for assault on a constable in the execution of his duty. Why do that when the prisons are full to bursting point? The Government say that they have no plans to bring into effect either Section 281 of the Criminal Justice Act, which raises the maximum sentence of imprisonment imposable by a magistrates' court from six months to 51 weeks, or Schedule 26 to that Act, which increases the penalty to 51 weeks for a whole range of offences now punishable by maxima ranging from one month to six months. Let us avoid sentence creep in this Bill and keep all sentences down at six months, which has always proved adequate to deal with this and similar offences.
	Immigration officers are being given new powers of detention, and their existing powers of arrest, entry, search and seizure are extended. When they take over the functions that had been exclusively exercised by the police, we shall want to know whether they are to be governed by a code of conduct identical to PACE and whether the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is to be disapplied to those functions.
	We disagree strongly with the reservation of the CRC, as the noble Baroness is aware. It allows the BIA to ignore or at best to have inadequate regard to the effect that their practices may have on children. In report after report of the chief inspector on IRCs, and in the horror stories that one hears of individual cases, the treatment of children in ways that are contrary to their best interests is being exposed all the time. For example, on 9 May, after Ms J.M. had been taken into custody by the police in Crawley, her two babies, Collin, aged three weeks, and Chantelle, aged one year, were removed and placed in foster care while Ms J.M. was detained in Yarl's Wood. At the time, the younger child was breastfeeding. On 23 October last year, the Minister gave an assurance that an infant would be separated from the mother only in the most exceptional circumstances. In this case, it was three weeks before the combined weight of several women's organisations got the two babies restored to their mother's care. It is this case and others of a similar nature that leads us to the conclusion that the reservations of the CRC should be reviewed; and we will provide an opportunity of doing that in Committee. So much for the Minister's assurance that the BIA takes seriously its responsibilities to children; there are enough cases of this kind to indicate that it does not.
	In addition, as the Minister predicted, we shall seek to extend the application of Section 11 of the Children Act 2004 to the Immigration Service to ensure that it has regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. This would cover immigration officers carrying out arrests, detentions and searches under Clause 2, which until now have been the duty of police officers, to whom Section 11 does apply. We welcome the comment of the Minister, Liam Byrne, at Commons Report stage. He said:
	"We need to go further in ensuring that the Border and Immigration Agency has a stronger safeguarding obligation ... I remain open to the argument that a legal requirement should be put on the BIA, and a specific safeguarding element should be written into the law".—[Official Report, Commons, 9/5/07; col. 235.]
	In the spirit of that assurance, we hope that the opportunity will be taken at last to repeal Section 9 of the treatment of claimants Act, which allows families with children to be made destitute if they do not leave promptly after their rights of appeal have been exhausted. The noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, agreed to our suggestion that power to repeal that inhumane provision by order should be inserted in the 2006 Act. We thought that there was an understanding that the report on the pilots, which were then being evaluated, would be published and, depending on the results, the repeal power in Section 44 of the 2006 Act would be exercised. We already knew that making families destitute was both cruel and ineffective as a way of encouraging voluntary departure, but after 18 months the report on the pilots has not appeared, and the Section 9 sword of Damocles hangs over an increasing number of families.
	Another matter not dealt with directly in the Bill is the increasing frequency of age disputes concerning UASC, on which a Home Office consultation has just ended. The Children's Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley-Green, has urged the Government not to roll out proposals for change until the findings of the Crawley report, When is a Child not a Child?, have been fully debated. I hope that we can have an assurance on that. Sir Al says that there are serious ethical concerns about subjecting children to ionising radiation that is of no therapeutic benefit, when the validity of their consent is doubtful and the process cannot determine a child's chronological age. I have a particular interest in this, because it was as a result of a report published by my office in 1981 that the use of X-rays as a means of age determination was brought to an end in February 1982 by the then Home Secretary, William Whitelaw.
	We have concerns that the Government have already jumped the gun on one particular issue by giving the Secretary of State carte blanche under Clause 16 to impose whatever reporting conditions he sees fit on persons with limited leave to remain. We know that this is aimed at unaccompanied children, because the Minister said so. But the social services departments of local authorities already have a duty to know where "their" children are, and if there are concerns that some are not keeping proper track of them, it would be simpler to place the responsibility for additional checks on the local authorities, rather than create an additional bureaucracy to duplicate what most local authorities are doing already. The total number of such children in the whole country is only about 6,000, so it should not be too difficult. But the use of Clause 16 may well heighten the risk of absconding by children approaching the age of 18, who are bound to fear that reporting requirements are the prelude to detention and removal. Those requirements will be disruptive to a child's education if she has to report during a school term, and they could be a severe burden on the child's limited resources.
	As for the automatic deportation of a foreign criminal, we believe that to take away entirely the court's discretion over recommendations for deportation is wrong in principle, as we argued in another place. Mandatory sentences are not often approved by Parliament, for the simple reason that it is impossible to foresee every set of circumstances that might arise in relation to a particular charge. One way to maintain an element of judicial discretion while achieving the object that foreign criminals who commit serious offences are generally deported, would be to incorporate into the sentencing guidelines the tests in Clause 31 while still requiring the Secretary of State to make a deportation order when the court recommends that.
	We are also concerned that a person is liable to automatic deportation if he has been sentenced to prison for at least a year, whereas a "serious criminal" loses the protection of Article 33(2) of the refugee convention, by virtue of Section 72 of the NIA Act 2002, only if he was sentenced to at least two years. We objected to that provision as being contrary to the spirit of the convention, which requires every applicant's case to be considered on its own merits, and we agree with the UNHCR, which says that this provision further erodes the principle of non-refoulement.
	The requirement to apply for a biometric immigration document—it is wrongly described in the cross-head as "registration regulations", when there is no reference to registration in the text—excited a great deal of interest in another place and I am sure will do so here as well. It covers all non-EEA nationals in the UK, including those with indefinite leave to remain. Asylum seekers are already fingerprinted, and visa applicants will be fingerprinted everywhere by 2008. The Eurodac computer system enables the UK to identify asylum applicants who have already applied in another EU country and to send them back there under the Dublin convention. The UK will also participate in the law enforcement aspects of the SIS II database, but not the immigration alerts, because we are not part of Schengen. But we will have access to the information relating to persons wanted for extradition and persons wanted either as witnesses or for prosecution or enforcement of sentences, including biometric data, when we join SIS II in 2009 or 2010.
	The arrangements for the management of SIS II, the rights of access to it and the data protection arrangements that will apply to it were all examined by your Lordships' European Union Committee in a report published three months ago. I mention that project because we need the same degree of transparency and precision in the way that the information in Clauses 5 to 15 will be managed and used. Everything is left to the regulations that are to be made under Clause 5(2)—a pattern which is familiar from previous immigration legislation. It is an unsatisfactory process because when Parliament finally sees the regulations, we have practically no option but to accept them, however objectionable we may find some details.
	Universities UK, for instance, has asked a number of questions about how this scheme will affect tens of thousands of foreign students and the one in six foreign academic staff; it is also worried about the reporting and residence restrictions in Clause 16 and about the removal of appeal rights in Clause 19, even before there is a clear understanding of how the points system introduced by the NIA Act just over a year ago will operate.
	The mass of primary legislation, statutory instruments, rules and forms takes up over 1,200 pages in the latest edition of the Immigration Law Handbook, and is so difficult to understand that the Government frequently get things wrong. We have been saying for the past five years that consolidation is desperately needed. It is disappointing that despite the assurance by the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, that she would take up the matter in the ministerial group on the Law Commission, which she chairs, a year and a half later we have got only to the simplification consultation which has just been announced.
	The new primary legislation promised for 2008 is not going to be limited to consolidation, as we understand it, but will contain new order-making powers which are "capable of quick adjustment"—that sounds like a threat to bypass Parliament. This will hit us before we have digested the points system and the substantial changes before us in this Bill. We will look to see how flexible the Government are on this Bill as an indication of whether their simplification is a disguised attempt to whittle down the legitimate rights of legal migrants still further.

The Lord Bishop of Winchester: My Lords, it is a real privilege to follow the noble Lord's speech, with its marvellous controlled passion making for comprehensive grasp of detail. I am most grateful to him. I guess that many of us seeking to speak in this debate come with a range of first-hand or close second-hand experience of the issues at stake. Mine seems to me to amount to the need to declare an interest. I have a good deal of first-hand information and experience of asylum seekers and would-be immigrants in Southampton, in particular, where a range of churches and the Southampton and Winchester Visitors Group are active and in close contact with me.
	Also, because of my commitment to the Great Lakes region of Africa and especially to the Democratic Republic of Congo, people from around the country—lawyers, in particular—write to me about Congolese and Rwandan asylum seekers. In that capacity, I have read more adjudications on these matters than I should like to have done. People from other parts of the world come to the attention of me and my colleagues—particularly Iranians and those for whom a change of religious faith is among the things that those adjudicating on asylum applications have to cope with. As the noble Baroness knows, I have also been engaged in deportation issues, and she and I have disagreed about whether deportations are still taking place to manifestly unsafe and dangerous parts of the world. Therefore, I should declare an interest in that respect, as it may be taken to colour what I go on to say.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, catalogued the legislation that we have dealt with in recent years, and I come to this latest Bill agreeing with the Government that there really is a crying need for rebuilding confidence in our immigration system—words which form part of the title of the 2006 document. I note that the other words are fair, effective, transparent and trusted. Those, too, are admirable aims, and of course we must have efficient, effective and safe operations on our borders—safe for all concerned. However, in my limited experience and in that of the many people working in this field with very much more experience and daily contact than me, the system comes over as something quite different. Words such as unjust, inhumane, ignorant and thoughtless are constantly in my and others' minds as we find ourselves working with people at the sharp end of these systems, whether they are asylum seekers or those who, in a range of ways, have been tasked or have volunteered to work with asylum seekers. I find that the system—or systems; as we have heard, there is an interlocking range—constantly (I am tempted to say "institutionally") puts at risk the well-being and lives of vulnerable people and those who should be treated better.
	My colleague, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, will speak in this debate on the very serious questions surrounding destitution and starvation and on the issues raised by the noble Baroness concerning children, young people and families with children. However, I should say to the noble Baroness and to the House that I do not think that either he or I have in our pockets a logo which will help her on her way with all this. I shall simply point to a number of other areas where it seems that the Bill requires extremely careful scrutiny in your Lordships' House. I take fully on board the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, that working in Grand Committee on a Bill of this level of controversy is unsatisfactory. Without substantial and severe amendment, the Bill will clearly fail to achieve the Government's aims and it certainly will not reassure those who know most about this subject that we can be proud to be British in the range of matters with which the Bill attempts to deal.
	The detailed material that most, if not all, of us have received expresses these observations and difficulties very well. I simply point the noble Baroness to what she will be as aware of as I am, if not more so: the submissions of the Refugee Council, the Immigration Advisory Service and Still Human Still Here. So I shall speak summarily. She referred to another part of the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which has keen strictures to offer on Clauses 1 to 4, referring to the powers of immigration officers and the circumstances of detention. Paragraphs 1.6 to 1.19 of the report are very telling, and I hope that the Minister will tell us that the Government intend to take serious notice of them.
	Others have noted the serious circumscribing in the Bill—I would say the further limiting—of the remaining rights of appeal at a number of stages of the process. As many of your Lordships know, an appeal for many of those involved is a tortuous business, which is often made worse by the difficulty of gaining access to lawyers and translators with appropriate skills, leaving aside the hurdles that people face—I recognise that the noble Baroness and I have disagreed this year on this issue—when they reach adjudicators who frankly do not know one end of a central African country from the other or the kind of things that may happen there.
	Other speakers have already noted the range of dangers that exist in the strengthened provisions for mandatory deportation at a number of points in the Bill. There are also some serious omissions. The Bill makes it no easier for people fleeing from persecution, terror or ill treatment to seek asylum legally in this country rather than reaching here by illegal means, which when they are discovered to have done so understandably in one sense proves to their disadvantage. That is an enormous problem for this country's reputation as a place that is prepared to accept people who really need to be here because of the conditions in their own countries. As noble Lords—the Minister included—know well, there are only too many countries where that is the case.
	There is no proposal in the Bill to improve the quality of initial decision making. The more decisions that can be got right first time—very many are overturned on appeal—the less time the process will take, and the better off those who really need to be well served by our immigration legislation will be in terms of being given residency in this country; and the less certain sections of the press get excited, the more humane, dignified and right the whole process will be.
	There is one last omission. I am concerned that the Bill does not promise to contribute to an informed, reasoned and humane debate about the matters at issue—a major responsibility of the Home Office that it seems rarely to achieve. Of course, the matters at issue are important and delicate; of course, our borders have to be well policed. Of course, as the noble Baroness correctly notes, there are sharks, villains, traffickers and imposters, and I welcome the clauses that deal with them. Unfortunately, our structures are also extraordinarily and, it seems to me, unwisely hostile to many of the economic migrants who we should be welcoming to a much greater extent than is currently possible. Most serious of all, the structure—I do not believe that the Bill bids much to improve it; rather it makes it worse—is extraordinarily and grievously painfully hostile to the many vulnerable, frightened and hurt people whom the prejudices of sections of the press seem constantly to be encouraging the Government, notwithstanding their basic moral position, to ill treat through the current system. I should have liked the Bill to consider all those things and to be much better.

Lord Judd: My Lords, the words of the right reverend Prelate are extremely significant as we start our deliberations and we should bear them very much in mind as we go through the Committee.
	My noble friend referred to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member. We gave careful consideration to the Bill. We have had helpful correspondence with Ministers, which we greatly appreciated. The committee accepts that increasing border security is a legitimate aim, which may even be required by human rights law.
	There remain five concerns which the committee is convinced should be addressed in deliberations on this legislation. I would be grateful if my noble friend could deal with them when replying to the debate. First, the wider role envisaged for immigration officers to detain, search and seize seemed to us to be a general policing function, and we believe that it should therefore be subject to the same code of practice as that which applies to the police and that there should be proper training for this. We also believe that the Government have not yet demonstrably established the need for this significant step, and should do so before it is taken.
	Secondly, in the absence of detailed provisions, it is not in our view possible to assess the compatibility of the proposed biometric registration scheme for non-EEA nationals with the right to respect for private life in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The committee is, however, anxious lest it could give rise to de facto racial profiling. Minority ethnic groupings will probably be disproportionately required to prove their immigration status. To be lawful, the Government must therefore ensure that race plays no part in the profiles used to decide the order in which they phase in implementation of the biometric immigration document.
	Thirdly, the committee believes that a specific time frame should be laid down, within which the Secretary of State must decide whether a deportation order is required, if we are to avoid the likelihood of prolonged post-sentence immigration detention in connection with the provisions for deportation of foreigners convicted of criminal offences. Fourthly, while the committee welcomes the provision for asylum seekers to receive support pending final determination of their claim, it believes that further provisions are essential to ensure that asylum seekers, including asylum-seeking children, are not subjected to inhumane and degrading treatment but are treated with common humanity.
	Fifthly, the committee welcomes the extension of the scope of human trafficking offences, but is convinced that further measures are necessary to improve detection of trafficking victims. It is frankly disappointing that there is no clear timetable for implementing the Government's action plan on trafficking. As I say, it would be helpful if my noble friend could refer to these points when replying.
	I want to speak specifically about how this Bill affects children. Earlier this year, the Joint Committee on Human Rights conducted an inquiry into the treatment of asylum seekers. I was repeatedly struck during that inquiry by the way children are treated in the asylum process and, too often, by the sheer invisibility of their needs. I am convinced that we all need to take children's welfare at least as seriously as immigration control, and I am concerned about measures in the Bill and elsewhere that fail to do this. Within the context of necessary security measures, we must surely protect the needs of the vulnerable. Who is more vulnerable than a child seeking asylum? Surely this goes to the heart of what we are trying to defend and preserve in our society.
	Much is changing in policy towards these children and in the wider asylum system. These changes are largely taking place outside Parliament, and we must consider them if we are to understand the real impact of this legislation. The Government have just finished consulting on Planning Better Outcomes and Support for Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children, an overhaul of how asylum-seeking children are treated in the United Kingdom. Yet before the consultation had closed, they introduced measures designed to enact part of the proposed new system through Clause 16. Quite apart from the doubt that that inevitably sheds on the integrity of the consultation process, I share the Refugee Children's Consortium's belief—and I note that the Government have, at least indirectly, acknowledged this—that making children report to immigration officers for potentially long periods is harmful and quite wrong given the corporate parenting duty that social services have towards these children.
	Another important and related development happening outside this House is the new asylum model, under which children are now given leave for a shorter period; that is to the age of 17 and a half, instead of 18. This is to ensure that their application for asylum is finally decided by the time they are 18. This has caused a problem with existing legislation, particularly Section 83 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. The effect of Section 83 is that people granted less than one year's leave are denied an appeal against a decision to refuse asylum. It applies almost exclusively to people granted discretionary leave and, within that, to unaccompanied children.
	Half of all unaccompanied children are aged 16 or 17 on arrival and so are likely to be given less than a year's leave under the new arrangements. At current arrival rates, that means that around 1,500 more children a year may be denied an appeal against a decision to refuse asylum while they are still children. I do not think that the Government intended to deny such large numbers of children an appeal against the decision to refuse asylum, given the efforts that are being made to ensure finality to the asylum claim as soon as possible. I therefore hope that the Government will welcome an amendment to Section 83 to restore the right of appeal to anyone granted leave of any length on refusal of asylum.
	I am also concerned about Clause 32. It lists a number of exceptions to the automatic deportation of foreign offenders as outlined in Clause 31. One of those exceptions includes foreign nationals who were under 18 when they were convicted of an offence that would ordinarily result in automatic deportation. By making the date of conviction rather than the date on which the offence was committed the cut-off point for determining the age of the offender, we could be legislating to deport automatically those who were minors when they committed the offence. Not only does that contravene the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, but it is inconsistent with previous legislation and could result in inconsistency of treatment between offenders.
	The Joint Committee's inquiry concluded that overall the asylum process lacked somebody to protect and argue for children's welfare before decisions were made. There is no person or mechanism built into the process to uphold their rights. We asked for a statutory guardian to prevent children being treated badly—a good example of where that happens is in the decision to detain children. Article 37 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states:
	"No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time".
	The UK is clearly deviating from that. In 2005, which is the last full year for which we have official statistics, 1,855 children were detained with their families, and 95 of them were detained for more than a month.
	The Children's Society reports the case of a family who were detained in Yarl's Wood for several months. One of the children in the family, who was eight years old at the time, had learning difficulties and was distressed to see his mother disintegrate while in detention until she attempted to take her own life. The child missed several medical appointments while he was in the centre, appointments which were essential to have a prosthetic limb fitted, and eventually contracted a bone infection that made it impossible for the limb to be fitted. It is impossible to overestimate the impact of this experience on an eight year-old child.
	In the light of cases such as that, the Joint Committee concluded that children's welfare cannot be upheld in detention and that such detention should therefore cease. Indeed, detention breaches the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights. I shall therefore be prepared to support amendments seeking to end the detention of children.
	In no small way, the application of Section 11 of the Children Act to the Immigration Service would tackle this lack of thought about children's welfare that permeates the system. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is designed to ensure that there is someone in the middle of any process involving a child who is advocating the child's well-being and accepting that their well-being is paramount. This is about creating a culture which respects children's rights and embedding that culture in the asylum process. We need to use the law to ensure that there is a framework which underpins a cultural shift in how we treat these children.
	The Government have indicated that they plan to draw up a safeguarding strategy for children, but children's organisations believe that is not adequate to promote a cultural shift which is, above all, required. The Refugee Children's Consortium powerfully argues that only an equal duty on immigration agencies in domestic legislation would begin to ensure children's safety and welfare. Extending Section 11 of the Children Act would be a very good start to establish this cultural shift. But, arguably, we need to go further.
	Ultimately, I believe that this debate goes to the heart of what sort of society we want to be and whether we believe that when we introduce tougher immigration legislation we must also protect the child in the middle of that process. In the name of civilised values of course we must. It should be an essential imperative in everything that we do. To meet that commitment the Government will have to remove their reservation to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The reservation I am sure is against the spirit of the convention. Article 2 states that rights should be applied,
	"without discrimination of any kind",
	and Article 22 states that refugees should have the same rights as other children. These rights are not being applied to children in the asylum process.
	Children's organisations also believe that the reservation is responsible for creating a two-tier system for children and prevents child asylum seekers being regarded as children like any others. This Bill represents a good opportunity to begin to sort this out. Indeed, I thought my noble friend made some very encouraging remarks in this respect when introducing the Bill. I welcome that.
	I urge the Government to act on the measures I have tried to describe and to ensure that children's well-being is always the primary consideration in how they are treated.

Lord Roberts of Llandudno: My Lords, I feel privileged to take part in the debate. I also feel that I am among friends because noble Lords have so far all spoken in the same direction that I intend to speak. If the Minister takes notes of everything that has been said, we will end up with a very different Bill—and I hope that that is so.
	It feels as though the Bill still has hostility, enmity and suspicion towards those who wish to enter the United Kingdom. This is the fifth major piece of legislation on immigration in the past seven years. It is as though you are at home, and you say, as I say to my children sometimes, "Remember to put the bolt on the back gate. Remember to lock the porch. Remember to put the chain on". Everywhere we go closes the door or bars the door against those who could very well contribute so much to the lives of our community in the United Kingdom.
	The Government maintain that immigration is beneficial to the United Kingdom's economy, but it appears that what they are proposing just feeds those who are hostile to immigrants and those whom we will term asylum seekers. The cultural benefits, the new ideas and the contribution to so much of society are largely disregarded, and we are told that the horror of economic migration is not to be encouraged. I suggest that if we do not attract new people and new ideas then we stagnate as a people. It is the ferment of new ideas that makes a nation progressive and have a real impact on the new world.
	There is great benefit as people move from one area to another, from one country to another. What would have happened if we had boycotted North America? There would have been no Welsh people in Utah or Scottish people in Canada. We would have closed the door. The Welsh have even emigrated to Patagonia, where we have made some sort of contribution. I suggest that great changes for good are made in our world as people move to different countries and are welcomed. Let us think about where we are today. If we looked around the Chamber, we could point to noble Lords from here and there and say, "Your surname is strange". There is a mix, which is what gives us hope for real change and real benefit. One noble Lord, who is not in the Chamber today, said that his father got on his bike to look for work. That was economic migration, of course, which is what makes a society change. However, we are undermining our own economy and starving our own culture by locking doors. We need a different approach, and this Second Reading debate gives us the opportunity for an overall view of the legislation.
	The Statue of Liberty bears these words:
	"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore".
	That was good for yesterday in the United States and the United Kingdom, but that was yesterday. Now we would say, "Sorry, there is no admission. Your tired, your poor, your huddled masses can stay where they are". That is our approach; our approach has changed so much in the past century.
	We have really gone to town this year celebrating 200 years since the end of the slave trade. That has given us the opportunity to claim some moral superiority. This generation no longer supports the slave trade. At the same time, however, we are locking the doors, securing the bolts and ensuring that the chains are on. The dream of Martin Luther King was that folk would,
	"not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character".
	He saw the possibility of youngsters of all races and circumstances being of equal value, but we have changed that now. We now say that they are welcome and can be of equal value as long as they are not, as noble Lords have said, the children of poor immigrants whose whole prospects are curtailed by this type of legislation. Have not immigrants and asylum seekers the right to dream dreams for their children? Is it not our task to make those dreams a reality? No part of this Bill should be hostile or lock doors. This should be a Bill of hope that will enable some of those dreams to become reality. So much of our legislation closes doors rather than opens them.
	The infamous Section 9 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 was a deliberate move to withdraw all support to families whose asylum claims have been refused. They face destitution, or at the very least separation from their children, and they are not allowed to work to support themselves. What recourse do they have? We are really starving them into submission. Section 9 is totally immoral. We have an opportunity to do something now. I am told that the three trial areas for the initial implementation of Section 9 are on hold, but cannot we take the opportunity afforded by this Bill to wipe out this type of clause once and for all? We will get the opportunity if we look at Clause 17. We will be looking for an amendment to that clause or a following clause. We on these Benches will press for that and I know that all parts of the House will support us.
	Can any civilised Government countenance causing deliberate harm or destitution? This is not just a political issue or just an issue of immigration, it is a great moral issue. It is as real to its victims today as was slavery 200 years ago. This Bill has the opportunity to be a hope, a light, and to bring some dreams to reality. It can open doors and keep hope alive. If we do anything other than this, we are condemning ourselves. We are showing ourselves to be people who have little compassion. People are people and children are children. Whatever their circumstances, they deserve to be treated with dignity and in such a way that keeps hope alive.

Lord Hylton: My Lords, this Bill is another example of the Home Office doctrine that urgent social problems can be put right by ever more draconian laws. Many of the problems that it fails to address could be improved or resolved by well directed administrative action. Can the Minister assure the House that funds will be provided for the training of immigration staff, especially interviewers and case-holders, and that staff generally will remain in post long enough so that much-needed improvements will, in fact, be achieved?
	I shall emphasise some of the real problems that are daily experienced in immigration and asylum. The first problem is the large backlog of old applications, which is only slowly reduced. Then there are flaws in current asylum procedures. For years we have been asking for better first decisions, thus avoiding long delays and costly appeals. What do we find? We find many applications fast-tracked, giving applicants little time to prepare, and no legal advice, sometimes followed by long detentions. We find a low percentage of successful applications, followed by a substantial rate of successful appeals. In 2005-06, 20 per cent of appeals were won. Will the Government give this matter particular attention? We find many refused asylum applicants who are neither deported nor able to return home voluntarily. They are forbidden to work lawfully, so they work illegally or become destitute. We find significant numbers of adults trafficked for labour or sexual exploitation, with relatively few prosecutions in either category. We find convicted foreign national prisoners wrongly released or kept in prison after the end of their sentences when they should be deported. We find torture victims held in detention, despite countless assurances we have had that this would not happen.
	There is a whole raft of issues concerning asylum-seeking and migrant children, which we have already heard, where the best interests of the child are not upheld as they should be. I will come back to each of these very human real and urgent problems. As regards the older asylum cases, I have to ask what resources are being currently devoted to reducing and, if possible, eliminating the backlog. What extra resources will the Government provide? With how many cases has all contact been lost? How will the Government protect the most vulnerable in the backlog, especially women, children and the elderly?
	The things needed to improve the handling of old and new asylum cases have long been known. There must be first-class, up-to-date information about countries of origin. Changes in situations should be promptly known and the often flawed suggestion that applicants can move to another safe part of their country should be critically examined. Interviewers should understand that refugees often arrive dazed and disoriented. They need to be able to understand the psychological experience of sudden flight to a strange country. Interpreters also need empathy as well as good professional ability. Will the Government consider providing experienced legal advice to all applicants requiring interpretation, or who are totally ignorant of English ways and systems? I am sure this would produce better results.
	I come now to those who have been refused as refugees and who have no more in-country appeals available to them. On 14 December last year, in a debate that I opened, I concentrated on those at risk of destitution. I should mention that since then I have tried repeatedly to bring the non-government organisations to meet Ministers to discuss this scandalous situation, but I regret that I have had no success. Perhaps Ministers have been too busy splitting up the Home Office. The problems, however, are still here. Estimates of the numbers involved vary from 180,000 to 450,000. The policy of enforced destitution is not working because people find work of some kind or get charitable and community help. In any case, they usually see themselves as too poor to return voluntarily. Meanwhile, Britain has to pick up the mental health costs.
	Enforced removal is not working satisfactorily because the Home Office reckons the average cost at £11,000 per person, so that only some 20,000 people are removed in a year. The Home Office must surely become more realistic. It has to realise that many people not qualifying as refugees still need protection. It is not realistic to return such people to places such as Iraq, Somalia, Darfur, Iran, North Korea, parts of Burma or China, or indeed to return Christian converts to many Islamic states. Therefore the old category of exceptional leave to remain for a limited period of years has to be more widely used. It is necessary for humanitarian reasons because it allows people to work legally, thus meeting some of the demand for migrant workers.
	Turning now to children, the best interests of the child should always prevail. The police work to this principle, and so should the Immigration Service. We should remove our reservations from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and ratify the optional protocol which we signed some years ago. Nothing should be done to prejudice our ratification of the Council of Europe convention against trafficking, which again we have signed.
	Important conclusions flow from these points. Children should not be held in detention, with or without their parents. There should be no automatic deportation of children when they reach 18. Each case should be considered on its merits. There should be no compulsory taking of biometrics for those aged under 18. The Home Office has quoted a figure of 6,000 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children now being cared for by local authorities, 600 of whom may be trafficked. Both figures are, I suggest, very uncertain and are complicated by informal private fosterings which are often not registered. I have previously argued for better pay, training and support for foster parents, and for full registration of private placements. I do so again, and support the appointment of guardians ad litem whenever unaccompanied children have no capable advocate. Stronger action is needed to prevent children going missing and to trace them when they do. The national action plan on human trafficking should be fully resourced and implemented.
	I come now to perhaps the biggest issue of all, which I mentioned last December; namely, undocumented and irregular residents, those the French call "les sans papiers". They are mainly rejected refugees and other overstayers. Many have national insurance and health numbers here, but lack immigration status and citizenship. Some are married to British citizens and more have children born in Britain. There may be half a million such people—possibly more, who knows?—with perhaps 200,000 in the London region. They are wide open to exploitation and quite often earn less than the minimum wage.
	It is urgently necessary to bring as many as possible out of the twilight and out of the black and grey economies. To do so will reduce asylum backlogs, benefit the Revenue and prevent abuse and exploitation. Legalising and regularising would be in line with the conclusion of the Home Affairs Committee in 2004 and of a recent report from the Public Accounts Committee. A start should be made with those who have been in the country for four or five years and who have committed no serious offences. They should be given full rights to work for two years, after which they should be eligible for full citizenship.
	It is idle for Her Majesty's Government to argue that necessary and humane measures of this kind would abolish immigration control or attract swarms of boat people. The Government themselves had a family amnesty here in 2003, wisely benefiting 50,000 asylum applicants with their children. Since 1981 there have been some 20 regularising programmes throughout Europe, giving temporary or permanent permission to some 4 million irregular people. Experience in the United States is similar.
	The Government should not just dismiss serious arguments of this kind. They should consider what will really promote social inclusion and cohesion. I put it to your Lordships that what we need is good administration coupled with basic humanity. We can do without endless streams of new legislation, almost always unconsolidated. I trust that this bad Bill will be greatly improved before it becomes law.

Baroness Stern: My Lords, I am glad to have an opportunity to participate in this debate about another immigration Bill in the rather squalid history of UK immigration control. It has been a privilege to listen to so many well informed and compassionate contributions. I add the word "squalid" to the list of adjectives given to the House by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester, whose contribution reminded me that we have not lost our moral compass and that there is a host of people who know how unjust we have become in our treatment of other needy human beings.
	I should like to concentrate in my remarks on some of the matters that were raised about this Bill by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, for referring to so much of the committee's work. I shall address the automatic deportation of foreign prisoners, which, fortunately, is not quite automatic; the destitution of failed asylum seekers, a few of whom, fortunately, are to be a bit less destitute; and the treatment of victims of trafficking, which, unfortunately, is to remain unchanged by the Bill.
	Let me begin with foreign prisoners, which is a sad story from beginning to end. If the beginning is the point when the Home Office realised it had failed to deport, as it should have done, some prisoners who were not British passport holders and had committed serious offences, then the end is this Bill. In this discussion, I shall try to use non-emotive and, I hope, accurate language rather than the language of the Bill, which refers to "foreign criminals". I was quite surprised to hear the Minister use that term.
	The whole issue of foreign prisoners has been a gross administrative failure and has led to considerable injustice and inhumanity. One needs only to look at the report by Anne Owers, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, entitled, Foreign National Prisoners: A Follow-up Report, of January2007. She notes the consequences of the administrative failure to deport those who should have been deported and the panic that struck the Home Office. She says:
	"As a consequence, all foreign nationals were assumed to be deportable. Foreign nationals who had been in open conditions, or were on licence in the community, were returned to closed prisons, even if their behaviour had been exemplary. The trawl was so undiscriminating that it included some British citizens (who are not deportable in any circumstances), Irish and EEA nationals (who are deportable only in limited circumstances), and those who had committed only minor offences, but had lengthy residence and family ties only in the UK".
	She says that,
	"foreign nationals, suddenly and unexpectedly threatened with deportation ... found it impossible to find out what was happening to them, and were held in prisons and immigration removal centres far past their sentence expiry dates, even those who were desperate to return home. Their presence significantly contributed to the prison overcrowding crisis of late 2006".
	The chief inspector's report chronicles the anxieties, uncertainty, frustration and even despair among foreign national prisoners. One stark indicator of their predicament was the increased prevalence of self-harm and more suicide attempts. She cites two cases, one of a man on hunger strike because he wanted to return home and was still in prison six months after his sentence expired, and the other,
	"a refugee, desperate not to return home, who was only told that he would not be deported on the day his sentence expired, and shortly after he had tried to hang himself".
	The system, says Anne Owers, was one,
	"whose dysfunctionality had serious personal costs for foreign nationals, and practical consequences for prisons and immigration removal centres".
	I suggest that this whole affair is dysfunctional. It is also an example of an unacceptable failure to treat people as individual human beings with rights, needs and maybe a contribution to make, rather than as a political problem.
	The Bill does not improve the situation, it makes it worse. The regime it introduces is rigid, harsh and will lead to many injustices. What, for example, would happen under the new regime to the 23 year-old young man from Thailand called Sakchai Makao who had lived in Shetland since he was 10? He had served a prison sentence of 15 months for setting fire to something while he was drunk. He had represented Scotland in international athletics competitions. When he was released from prison, he got a good job at the sports centre in Lerwick. He was not just a "foreign criminal". He was also a sportsman, a member of a family, a worker, a taxpayer, a member of a community and a constituent, whose MP was very active on his behalf. Nevertheless, he was suddenly arrested and whipped off to a prison in England prior to deportation to Thailand, where he had no one and did not speak the language.
	I understand that 20,000 people live in Shetland. Nine thousand of them signed a petition to get him released on bail and sent back to Scotland. He appealed against deportation and was allowed to stay. What would happen to him under the Bill, and any other similar young people convicted even of shoplifting or graffiti spraying? Is he the sort of person we do not want in the UK under any circumstances? I hope very much to get a response from the Minister on that question.
	There is another problem. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has reported on the Bill and has raised a major human rights concern in relation to people convicted of criminal offences who do not have British nationality. The report says:
	"The Bill's provisions on automatic deportation of foreigners convicted of criminal offences appear to the Committee to give rise to a risk of prolonged post-sentence immigration detention".
	Indeed, this prolonged pre-deportation detention has been a matter of great concern to the members of independent monitoring boards. I declare an interest as the president of the Association of Members of Independent Monitoring Boards. The latest report from Lincoln prison says:
	"Despite the fact that a representative from the Immigration Service attends the prison each week, there are still too many prisoners of this category whose sentence has expired and should have been deported".
	The report from Holloway prison speaks of foreign nationals being held in prison beyond the end of their sentence, and being limited in their regime while in prison.
	The Joint Committee recommends that the Bill should be amended to lay down a specific timeframe within which the Secretary of State must decide whether a deportation order is required. I hope that that recommendation will be considered.
	I turn to the destitution of asylum seekers, which I anticipate we will hear more about in a moment. The Joint Committee on Human Rights recently reported on the treatment of asylum seekers. I recommend that report to anyone who was surprised at my use of the word "squalid" at the beginning of my remarks. We reported that we had been persuaded by the evidence that the Government have been practising a deliberate policy of destitution in relation to asylum seekers and that such deliberate use of inhumane treatment is unacceptable. The Minister will be glad to hear that the committee welcomed the provision for asylum seekers to receive subsistence support pending final determination of their claim but suggested that more is needed if asylum seekers, including asylum-seeking children, are not subjected to inhumane and degrading treatment but are treated with common humanity.
	Finally, let me say a word about human trafficking. The Joint Committee welcomes the Bill's extension of the scope of existing human trafficking offences, but is disappointed that the opportunity has not been taken to introduce more effective protection for the victims of trafficking. In our recent report on human trafficking, we concluded that the current level of protection provided to victims is far from adequate from a human rights perspective. The committee argues that the Bill should be amended to improve protection for trafficking victims by providing, for example, that where there are reasonable grounds to believe that a person is a victim, that person shall not be removed from the UK until the process for identifying whether they are a victim is complete. We argued for a recovery and reflection period of three months to be granted to a person who has been identified as a victim of trafficking, during which time immigration enforcement measures should not be taken against them. We also argued for renewable residence permits of up to six months' duration to be granted to victims of trafficking. I should be grateful to hear the Minister's views on these proposals, which would mostly apply to women who have been trafficked into this country for the sex trade.
	I hope very much that the Bill can be improved considerably in Committee and that it will be the last of this sort of legislation.

The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds: My Lords, I, too, am grateful to be a part of this positive debate about ways in which we can improve our asylum system and unite behind the words which are repeated in the Explanatory Notes describing a system which is fair, effective, transparent and trusted. If that can remain at the heart of what we are looking for, a good deal of unity might develop on the changes necessary for this Bill—and I hope that I am not simply being naïve in hoping that that can be achieved through our combined efforts.
	I shall concentrate on two particular areas in which there are opportunities to be seized. The first of them has been spoken of very extensively in this debate, but I shall add to the pressure coming on the whole question of the treatment of children. The second area is the danger of destitution.
	It has been good to hear the words of the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, the noble Lords, Lord Avebury and Lord Judd, and others on seeking to provide much better provision for the safety of children through this Bill. That needs to be put more simply than "safety". The Government's principles in Every Child Matters need to resonate in our thinking as we study the Bill. Children are to be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution and have economic well-being. There are places where that is happening within our schools, and I pay tribute to the work of many schools in those areas where there are significant numbers of asylum seekers, which have done so much to make those children welcome and to integrate them into the lives of their communities.
	I hope that the Minister and her colleagues will speak particularly to those teachers and head teachers in our schools on what they feel, as a result of their real experience in our schools, is the way forward for children of asylum seekers or those seeking asylum themselves within our communities. There are so many others in detention centres, facing the might of the Immigration Service, for whom the words of Every Child Matters are so far from true. The Bill broadens considerably the powers of immigration officers for temporary detention under Clause 2(3) or arrest under Clause 18. If such extensions of power are to be given, it becomes all the more imperative that the Section 11 duty of the Children Act should be extended to the Immigration Service. I noted earlier the hesitation of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, about whether that in itself can be enough. It can be easy to put a phrase like that into the legislation, but real training will be needed for it to be enacted in reality at our ports and among our asylum seekers.
	That part of the 2004 Act applies now to the police, so there can be no reason at all to exclude the Immigration Service from its provisions. When this was tested during the passage of the Children Act, it was argued that such a provision might hamper immigration officers. That tells it all. The Section 11 duty is to safeguard children and promote their welfare. How can that possibly hamper anyone? If the work of immigration officers is intended to be fair and trusted, as the Bill argues, it is to the benefit of all that, like the police, they should be clear that safeguarding children is a primary concern in determining the manner in which their duties and powers are exercised. The police make a particular point of ensuring this, not least in their own contacts with schools; it is crucial that the immigration department does the same thing.
	Clause 16 imposes those conditions about reporting and residence—very wide-ranging powers again. It is argued that that applies particularly to unaccompanied children, despite the Children Act requirement on social services to care for and protect such children. The last thing they need is further restrictions. As we are talking about legislation I sometimes wonder—perhaps this is inevitable—whether there is a temptation to forget the human beings for whom we are making laws. We need to recognise the fear felt by children who are often already damaged by maltreatment in their own country, often, too, by the action of people smugglers—I welcome the strengthening of measures against them in the Bill—and children who need care and affection.
	I am not sure that I have met anyone who, knowing children in those circumstances, believes that they ought to be deported. We need a Bill that defends their rights and allows us to show them hospitality. Examples have been given during this debate. I think of a youngster who was in the middle of his A-levels when he was deported to the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has disappeared. When he first arrived there he made mobile phone calls to his friends in Leeds. Those have ceased and nobody knows where he is. When you have listened to a child phoning from Yarl's Wood, screaming about her desperation and that of her mother not about their treatment but the fact that they are there and about the fear which is going through them, it is hard to accept the more problematic parts of this Bill.
	We need to examine the Bill through the lens of the Children Act and to tackle the destitution of families. That concern combines my two themes and takes us back again to Section 9 of the asylum and immigration Act 2004, which removes support from asylum-seeking families whose claim has failed. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts, spoke movingly about that. The Secretary of State has the right to repeal Section 9 by order. West Yorkshire was one of the pilot areas for Section 9. We are still awaiting a decision. We are told that the Secretary of State is still pondering the evidence he has been given. I cannot find anybody in west Yorkshire, whatever their views on asylum—that includes many who believe that we ought to have a firmer asylum system—who believes that Section 9 has had a positive effect on anybody. It is ineffective and inhumane. We in Leeds are very aware of those who simply disappeared following their treatment in the pilots.
	There can be no justification for making families destitute. That leads to my second theme and the opportunity to take up the proposals in the Rowntree report on destitution in Leeds that was published this year, MovingOn:From Destitution to Contribution. Like others, I welcome Clause 17 as a demonstration of the Government's commitment to support asylum seekers throughout the appeals process. But that will still leave tens of thousands of asylum seekers whose appeals have failed, who cannot return to their home country and who are destitute. The Still Human Still Here coalition wants to work with the Government to ensure that destitution is not used as policy and that it disappears from our streets.
	The Rowntree destitution inquiry in Leeds was chaired by Kate Adie. Its staff spoke with a wide range of people forced to rely on charitable resources for basic food and health needs. It concentrated on the organisation Positive Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers and on those involved with it, those who work for the local authority and those striving to get rid of destitution in Leeds. That whole demeaning provision of food parcels, welcome and necessary though it is, demonstrates the need for proper, humane provision for people in desperation, fear and inner turmoil.
	It was fascinating to meet the members of that commission at the various points of the work that they were doing. They came, rightly, from outside the area and were open-minded about what they might discover. They came with very different political and social backgrounds. As I and others met them at various points in their inquiry, we found them becoming more and more shocked and more and more angry at what they found as they were confronted by something of the horror of destitution. At the very least, there needs to be an amendment to Clause 17 to extend Section 95 of the 1999 Act to support people so long as they are in the UK.
	The Rowntree commission's major finding was that asylum seekers should be given the legal right to work and so to contribute to our society through the taxation system. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, has already referred to that. There are jobs available. There are jobs available in Leeds. Many asylum seekers have skills that could contribute to our economy. Some find jobs of sorts in the black economy and are paid at a fraction of the minimum wage and are never recorded anywhere. That is an encouragement to crime. The commission reports that experts in business and council leaders all agreed that new workers would benefit Yorkshire. The restoration of the right to work while claims are being processed and until safe return can be negotiated should be embraced by us all, whatever our broader views on asylum issues, to reduce sharply the number of disappeared asylum seekers, to provide dignity for human beings and to increase fairness, effectiveness, transparency and trust. I hope that we shall be able to amend the Bill in such terms.

The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, I begin by welcoming the opening speeches from the government Front Bench and the opposition Benches for the high priority that they gave to the safeguarding of children. This is my third immigration and asylum Bill, and I cannot recall children being given such a priority at the start of proceedings before.
	"I am a very attractive 17 year-old woman from Sierra Leone. I was not present when my sister was killed. I am told that the men first played with her, asking her whether she wanted to have a machete cut off her hand or her arm. I was not present, but whenever I tell the story of her death I cannot stop myself weeping".
	"I am a young Muslim woman from Afghanistan. I speak no English and have been living in a mixed hostel in London's Soho for four months. There are few speakers of my dialect in London, so I rarely see someone who can translate for me. I have not communicated with my parents for some days, but tonight I have heard that their town is being shelled. I feel sad, and I find myself crying often".
	"I am a Kosovan Albanian who is 17 years of age. My father is a teacher, and I enjoy playing chess with one of the volunteers at the hostel in which I am staying. If I can, I would like to stay in this country. I would like to have a family of my own and to work as a computer engineer".
	I begin with those thumb sketches in the hope that they may be helpful in keeping firmly in mind what is at stake in our deliberations on the Bill. We need to sustain public confidence in immigration and asylum policy. We need to set boundaries. We should not be sentimental, but we must keep our humanity. With the Bill, Her Majesty's Government are seeking to regain public confidence in the asylum system. While there have been serious errors, there has been much to praise in government action in this area. While serious concerns remain about the quality of initial decision-making, the speed of this process has accelerated tremendously since 1997. Her Majesty's Government have invested considerable resources in an area that has defeated a series of Governments in this country and is posing problems for Governments across the world.
	New senior appointments by the right honourable Beverley Hughes have significantly improved the service. This was most apparent in the improvement in commissioning of accommodation, a saving of many millions of pounds in one year alone. I should say that the quality of that accommodation still causes concern. I praise in particular the appointment in the spring of last year of Jeremy Oppenheim, director of the former National Asylum Support Service, as the children's champion. It was good recently to meet him and to hear of his progress. As a former director of social services, he is well placed to understand the issues involved, particularly those relating to the support required by those working on the front line with families and separated children. Such support is important, as my noble friend Lord Hylton underlined.
	It is important to remember that the children's champion suffers from important conflicting interests in his roles. I am glad of the work that he has been undertaking since his appointment to develop a strategy for children within the responsibility of the Border and Immigration Agency and I look forward to learning more from the Minister. It is encouraging that these children have received this close attention. We shall, of course, have to consider carefully whether the proposals will have the impact intended.
	I warmly welcome several aspects of the Bill: first, the introduction of new means to tackle human traffickers; secondly, the clarity it provides on the access to support that failed asylum seekers should have while making an appeal and, thirdly, the opportunities that the wide scope of the preamble of the Bill gives us to consider outstanding issues with regard to the treatment of asylum-seeking families and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.
	I shall concentrate on the effect that the Bill might have on children and families. I support all that has been eloquently said with regard to the new powers at ports, the introduction of biometrics, the reporting requirements on those granted leave to remain and on appeals. However, I am particularly concerned that we should now finally see the application of Section 11 of the Children Act 2004 to these children, as many noble Lords have said, and that this should be placed in the Bill. All other important agencies, apart from schools, which have their own protection framework, have such a duty in the discharge of their normal functions to have regard to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children. It is a weak duty framed in statute, so that it should not interfere with the normal functions of institutions; but it is important, because it obliges institutions to demonstrate that they have given consideration to safeguarding children. The theme of this afternoon's deliberations has been ignorance at times and the lack of thought and lack of consideration for children throughout the system.
	Examples of failure to think through the impact on children's welfare of developments in immigration and asylum are common. The development of the Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre exemplifies that failure. The centre holds families. It took about a year for the first social worker to be in place. The converted category C prison was run by former prison managers. It was over a year before serious efforts were made to make it feel less like a prison.
	Her Majesty's Government have been given a legal opinion that application of Section 11 would give rise to judicial review, because removing children from this country to Zimbabwe or Eritrea, for instance, often could be deemed not to be promoting their welfare. I read with interest the debate on this matter on Report in the other place. Another legal opinion dismisses that concern for several reasons, but an important one is that if rejected applicants wish to apply for judicial review there is ample ammunition to do so already in the Human Rights Act.
	I very much understand that the Minister may be concerned not to provide loopholes that unscrupulous lawyers might exploit to keep families in false hope of remaining here. It does her credit to do so. I hope now, on renewed examination, that she can see how groundless her fears are and that we can move forward. Excepting these of all children from the Children Act 2004 puts a large hole in Her Majesty's Government's ambition to see every child matters, as we often hear, and know is their sincere intention. It eases the way for those who share the popular ill will against asylum seekers. Adding these children to Section 11 of the Children Act might assist the new chief inspector, whose post this Bill establishes, to achieve the best treatment for children in the system, a matter surely to be high in his priorities. Including the Border and Immigration Agency among those agencies subject to Section 11 of the Children Act 2004 would be an important step to ensuring future developments are more considered in their treatment of children.
	That these children are currently excluded is a matter about which the Children's Commissioner for England, Professor Sir Alan Aynsley-Green, has the strongest concerns. I beg the Minister to consider that the Human Rights Act already gives ample opportunity for attempts at judicial review by failed asylum applicants and to consider why, therefore, applying Section 11 would lead to any more applications. I ask her to think about that and not reply at this stage.
	Her Majesty's Government have been developing their thinking with regard to the management of unaccompanied asylum seeking children. I would welcome in the course of this Bill assurances on the future safeguarding of these children and I am pleased that many Lords have raised this matter this afternoon. In particular, Sub-Committee F of the European Union Select Committee of your Lordships' House recommended in its report on returns of failed asylum seekers— HL Paper 74—that a child should be returned only if he could be directly passed to someone with proven parental responsibility in the home country. The committee also recommended that the Council of Europe guidelines on returns should be adopted. The latter make explicit that children should be held in detention for the shortest time possible, only when absolutely necessary and in a setting that does not resemble a prison. I look forward to hearing the Minister's mature response to these recommendations one year on. Perhaps there might be an opportunity to discuss all these matters relating to children outwith the Chamber. I welcomed the opportunity to discuss some of them with the Minister of State, Liam Byrne, last night.
	As we have been recalling, Section 9 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act introduced measures removing all support for families who had exhausted their asylum applications and were not co-operating in their removal. I will not speak further on that—I have spoken for 10 minutes already—but I hope that we can quickly remove that process. In the pilot areas, are families still experiencing this measure in practice? I took comfort from what the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, said.
	In conclusion, the children in our immigration and asylum system are exceedingly vulnerable, as we all recognise, and deserve our closest attention and concern. Ill considered measures that cause them more anxiety than necessary are likely to be detrimental to their development and the realisation of their full potential. But it is also in our interest to ensure that these children's potential is realised. I was grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds for highlighting the contribution these children make in school and elsewhere.
	These children, especially the unaccompanied asylum seeking children, tend to come from backgrounds of strong families, to have a determined interest in education and an ambition to become doctors, lawyers and teachers. With the right consideration, they can make an important contribution to this nation or to the land that they return to. Being young, they are more easily integrated into our society. Among the most admirable children's home managers I have known was an Ethiopian. She was a rock for the staff she led, assisting our most troubled children.
	"I am a 16 year-old girl and I have spent the last five months in Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre, as has my eight year-old sister and my mother. Earlier today I spoke with a member of the House of Lords, Lord Listowel. What harm have I done that I have been locked up? Why do adults treat children in this way?".
	We do need to set boundaries, we should be unsentimental, but we must keep our humanity. I look forward to the Minister's reply.

The Earl of Sandwich: My Lords, when I first looked at the language of the Bill, I began to wonder what century we were in. In Dorset, we are used to telling visitors that in the 1830s, at the time of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, you could be hanged or deported for sheep-stealing. Several clauses in the Bill now refer to automatic deportation instead of removal. Not long ago, detention centres suddenly became removal centres. Are there now to be deportation centres for would-be refugees, as well as criminals?
	What impression does this language give to newcomers of our famous hospitality towards asylum-seekers? Is this a Bill about criminality or immigration control? Like the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, my noble friend Lady Stern and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, I contend that it matters very much how we express attitudes in our legislation. However, I recognise that it is not primarily the wording of the law but the law itself that is under scrutiny.
	The Refugee Council reminds us that there must be a legal route for those seeking asylum in this country. That is critical, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester said. Their rights should be at the centre of the legislation. Somehow, Ministers' heads have been turned by the threat from terrorists and escaping foreign nationals. I do not deny that that threat exists, and I know that the Minister will have to spell it out again. It is a constant danger, as is immigration fraud, but as citizens we have other priorities; namely, the rights of individuals. Protecting our borders is as much about the safe passage of people as about terrorism.
	Our job—I speak as a Cross-Bencher and as a member of the Independent Asylum Commission—is to remind the Government of their broader duties under international conventions and of the effect of the Bill on those who may have no defence or protection from a life of discrimination, destitution and perhaps deportation. I welcome the Government's stated aim in Clause 17 of supporting asylum seekers through the appeal process. That shows that they take seriously the overwhelming evidence coming from the refugee agencies which are most closely involved.
	The new powers of detention by immigration officers at ports, the highly controversial requirements for biometric registration, the new powers in Clause 7 to cancel leave to remain, the use of information in Clause 8 and the charging of fees for identity cards, although aimed at preventing criminality, are so widely drawn that they are likely to hit the most vulnerable asylum seekers. However, I accept that the Government are currently flexible on some of those points.
	Although Clause 16 is, again, clearly designed for criminals, it could hit anyone with limited leave to remain in the UK, including those on holiday or spouses. There are concerns about reporting and residency. Equally seriously, as many have mentioned, there are fears that children may be required to report in unnecessarily and that their details may change during the registration process, which could thereby discriminate against them. The noble Lords, Lord Avebury and Lord Judd, gave examples of such fears in respect of the constant erosion of leave to remain. We know that the Government are aware of the need to extend the Section 11 duty in the Children Act 2004. Like my noble friend Lord Listowel, I am confident that that will happen, and I look forward to hearing confirmation from the Minister on this and on child safety.
	As many have said already, Clause 17 concerns the more than 280,000 so-called failed asylum seekers who are being pushed nearer to the edge of destitution by Section 9. A growing army of campaigners, including the major refugee agencies and churches, believe that we should be more realistic about the human rights of these people in our midst, whose existence is virtually ignored by the Government. Last week in our debate on slavery, I mentioned the Strangers into Citizens campaign, which advocates a limited amnesty for irregular migrants who have lived and worked in the UK for four or more years. My noble friend Lord Hylton called it "basic humanity". In an ideal world they should be granted a two-year work permit, and at the end of those two years, subject to employer and character references, they should be given leave to remain. When will the Government face up to this proposal? Can the Minister comment on that today?
	I do not believe that a Brown Government would institutionalise destitution, as suggested by some. I accept that the Government have moved centimetres forward, as they should, but I will vote for any amendments that reduce the risk of destitution and prevent scandals in the making, such as the refusal of treatment for pregnant women or cancer patients that we hear of from non-governmental organisations. There are well documented cases of victims of rape, torture or political persecution still walking the streets without the certainty of even Section 4 hard case support. My noble friend Lady Stern has given vivid examples from Anne Owers's evidence already.
	Clause 19 will cause a lot of concern to the universities because of its effect on foreign students who may not or cannot afford legal advice. The Government's current policy towards the destitute is to remove them from the scene as fast as possible over the next decade. This is one-way traffic and will be the only route for bogus asylum seekers who have lived off our society for too long. But the healthy babies are being thrown out with the bath water. Until the new asylum model proves itself, until case workers are properly trained in the causes of persecution—the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester brought this up as well—where people have come from, and the quality of initial decision is raised considerably further, the genuine refugees will continue to be swamped by the system. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Hylton who has had longer experience than any of us in this House. I have sat through six Bills; he must have sat through twice as many. I congratulate him on his very significant birthday today.
	Meanwhile Clauses 31, 32 and 54 unamended will continue to encourage deportation or removals on the back of a fast-track process, which has already been shown to be unfair. The concerns are that these clauses are mandatory and, as so often, will not take account of individual circumstances. Again, they are designed to catch criminals, but they are drawn very wide, pulling in anyone with a 12-month sentence, which could also include non-violent crimes of graffiti and theft. The presumption must be, and is already, in favour of removal but there should be proper discretion, and I will support amendments to this effect.
	In conclusion, this Bill is not good news for asylum seekers or anyone attempting legitimately to come to this country. Like others I look forward to the debates in Committee.

Lord Dholakia: My Lords, we now come to the concluding part of this important debate. Noble Lords have highlighted areas of serious concern, and I am sure that the Minister expected this, as she was explicit in her opening address for a commitment to improve legislation so that we can all move forward.
	I have lost count of the number of Bills on asylum and immigration we have dealt with in the past 10 years, and I therefore rely on the statistics produced by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay. Let us not be deceived by the title, "UK Borders Bill". We are dealing essentially with immigration and asylum matters. The main purpose of the Bill is to implement aspects of the Home Office review of the immigration system and help to underpin the new Border and Immigration Agency. We have been assisted in this exercise by the document: Fair, effective, transparent and trusted—Rebuilding confidence in our immigration system, published in July 2006. We have a further Home Office publication, Prevention of Illegal Working from the Border and Immigration Agency. The Bill is also designed to protect the United Kingdom from illegal immigration and illegal work by nationals of countries outside the European Economic Area. We now have a clear policy distinction between immigration from EU countries and that from the Commonwealth and the rest of the world.
	I detect confusion in the Home Office about how to achieve the objectives set out in these publications. Last summer, the Home Secretary launched the most radical shake-up of our immigration system. He came to a conclusion about the system's strengths and weaknesses, and how he believed it needed to change. This is no different from sentiments expressed by Jack Straw, David Blunkett and Charles Clarke, the previous Home Secretaries. They have all helped to ratchet up immigration matters on a piecemeal basis, and the present Home Secretary is no exception. I pose the key question: why are the Government not introducing a single integrated border force, enforcing police functions and well as those discharged by the Immigration and Nationality Directorate? Instead, the Home Secretary is able to designate immigration officers as having powers to detain an individual at a port if the officer thinks that they may be liable to arrest by a constable without a warrant, or is subject to a warrant for arrest. Of course, there are a number of qualifications, and we shall deal with them in Committee.
	One of the arguments advanced by the Minister in the other place is that, at a time when the terrorist threat to our country is so severe, we could not justify a wholesale reorganisation. I would have thought that this was the precise reason why he should fully exploit an integrated border force. I have repeatedly said that immigration is an emotive issue. Migration is an international phenomenon. It has been of enormous benefit to our economy. At a conservative estimate, migrants contribute over £2.5 billion to the British economy. Take away the doctors from the National Health Service, take away the transport workers, and the infrastructure of this country would almost collapse.
	Immigration will continue to play an important part in the future of this country. The Government have deployed tough talk on immigration, but the evidence points to incompetence and mismanagement in the important office of the Secretary of State. There is no such thing as "Fortress Britain". Of course there is a need to plan for managed migration. For too long, we have not distinguished between primary immigration, economic migration and asylum matters. The successful immigration policy is the one that works: rules that are transparent and administration that is efficient. The enforcement must be fair and, to an extent, swift. There is ample evidence that an incompetent immigration system has damaged public confidence in this country.
	I will give three examples of how not to handle immigration matters. Take the case of Tui Bahadur Pun, a former Gurkha who won the British military's highest honour, the Victoria Cross, and wanted to come to the UK for health reasons. He was told by the entry clearance officer that he was unable to demonstrate strong enough ties with the United Kingdom. It is easy to attach blame to our consulate abroad; I shall resist that temptation. But we cannot ignore the fact that, since 1962 when the first Commonwealth immigration Act was passed, we have created a culture that allows such stupid decisions to be taken. We must move from a subjective decision-making process to an objective approach. This is why there is merit in the points-based system.
	However, we need to exercise caution as to how it is implemented. Government plans for a points-based system for immigration could have a massive detrimental effect, for example, on the performing arts. The plan would force all performers from outside the EU to apply for a work permit visa at a cost of £200 each. This would drive up the costs of a touring company of 100 members from £8,500 to £20,000. It is essential that artists from abroad come to the UK to take part in performances to maintain our reputation as a cultural world leader and major tourist attraction. There is a great danger that touring companies will choose to avoid the UK due to the excessive costs and that the UK will no longer host world-class drama, music and dance events. The new immigration system is based on the Australian model in which performers are allowed entry outside the normal immigration rules. It is madness that the UK plans to implement this scheme without a similar exception. Surely discretion in the decision-making process should not be ruled out.
	Let me repeat what I have said before in debates of this sort. The purpose of immigration procedures is not in dispute: it is to admit those who are eligible and to exclude, or, subject to the appropriate humanitarian principles, to remove those who are not, but in any administrative system, questions arise about priorities. The administration of the immigration system is no exception. The need to exclude the ineligible means that checks have to be made to determine who is eligible and who is not. The greater the emphasis on excluding the ineligible, the more intensive those checks have to be, and the more intensive those checks are and the more complicated they are to administer, the greater the delay and expense. We saw the evidence of that during the time of the previous Government when there was a huge backlog of cases and hundreds of unopened mail bags at Lunar House in Croydon. All that has led to the fifth Bill on this matter since this Government were first elected.
	Then let us look at the lack of leadership and how one Minister responded; the Minister with responsibility for employment, Margaret Hodge. She is quoted as having said that British families should be given priority over economic migrants for council housing. The reality is that asylum seekers are not entitled to council housing, and arrivals from new EU states have restricted access to benefits. Is it not time that we stopped using migration as a political football? The real problems faced by the Home Office are administrative, and a knee-jerk reaction is less likely to help.
	The third example is the case of more than 1,000 foreign prisoners who were released without being considered for deportation—this case has been referred to by a number of noble Lords. I do not in any way underestimate the terrorist threat or why certain measures are necessary. British society is founded on, and bound together by, a shared understanding of our core liberal values of democracy, the rule of law, individual rights and mutual tolerance. We will not shirk from stating unambiguously that individuals or communities who seek to overturn those values are not welcome members of British society.
	Some elements of the Bill have merit, and we will support them; for example, turning the Immigration and Nationality Directorate into an independent agency. The powers vested in immigration officers in the first four clauses are designed to detain people suspected of non-immigration offences. I am afraid that these provisions do not contain any suggestion of an integrated border force, far from it. We are simply redeploying resources so we are shifting police officers from their current duties and putting custom officials in new uniforms. We shall certainly question whether the powers given to immigration officers are appropriate and proportionate and, if so, what precisely is envisaged to enforce compliance with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. Would any complaint be subject to independent investigation by the IPCC?
	The proposals for biometric registration are a precursor or a dry run for ID cards. It is estimated that nearly 3.9 million people have indefinite leave to remain here and therefore have no contact with the Immigration Service. They are legally here. It will be an administrative nightmare to secure biometric registration for this group. For the newcomers, the resources of our consulates will be stretched. There will be even longer queues at British posts abroad. How will that help persons coming to the UK for short family visits? Has anyone worked out the impact of this on our tourist industry?
	I understand that information to be included in the biometric immigration document is to be provided by regulations. Could we have a sight of what is demanded in the regulations? We want to know what will happen to biometric immigration documents—BID—for those granted British citizenship.
	The current offence of employing illegal workers will be replaced by a regime of civil penalties for employers and a new offence of knowingly employing an illegal worker. It is evident that the problem is not in finding those who are working or living illegally in the UK but in enforcing action against them. The figures for 2004-05 found that nearly 4,000 immigrants were working illegally, but that only eight employers were taken to court. Some serious questions need to be answered. Will BID be used for employment, access to benefits and NHS funding? If so, why has there not been the consultation with employers that was promised by the Minister for Immigration? Has the Minister published an assessment of the financial impact on the public or private sector of the compulsory checking of BIDs?
	We welcome Clause 17, which will ensure that asylum seekers can continue to be supported at all stages up to an appeal being determined. However, we have serious concerns about the provisions on automatic deportations of people who seriously breach the trust under which they are in this country. This is the aftermath of the foreign prison crisis of last year. Rules are being changed even though the problems were not the lack of power to deport but the failure to do so by the administrators. When the cases of 1,000 foreign nationals were examined, the Home Office said that about 40 per cent of them were not to be deported. Would it not be appropriate that instead of the automatic deportation of foreign national offenders, the courts should make the decision on deportation in each case and if there is a need to beef-up the power then we should do so?
	In Committee, we shall raise matters on which the Joint Committee on Human Rights has reported. These are issues highlighted by Save the Children, National Children's Bureau, Children's Legal Centre, National Association for Youth Justice, Barnardo's, the Children's Society and NACRO. We are grateful to them for scrutinising provisions affecting children. We shall further seek the opportunity to consolidate immigration legislation so that it is easy to understand. We would urge the Minister to read carefully the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust inquiry into destitution among refused asylum seekers.
	In conclusion, there are good things about this Bill which we would support. We shall probe those areas where the Government's intentions are not clear, and we shall certainly oppose those provisions where human rights are affected. I put faith in what the Minister has said. I do so for two reasons: first, she is prepared to effect changes on the basis of arguments we put forward; and, secondly—and probably the most important—that John Reid will have gone before we conclude this exercise.

Lord Henley: My Lords, I think it was Winston Churchill who asked to have his pudding removed because he said it "lacked a theme". Similarly, my honourable friend in another place Damian Green, when he spoke about the Bill, complained that it was a mere rag-bag of unconnected measures which—as Winston Churchill said about that famous pudding—lacked a theme.
	As with all Home Office measures, and we get a great many, it is worth recounting how many there have been. The last Home Office measure with which I was involved, the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, was the 60th since 1997. There has been one since, so this must be the 62nd. As for immigration measures, there seems to be some confusion about just how many there have been since 1997. My noble friend said that there has been five; the Law Society's briefing alleges six; others have said seven; and the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, sensibly says that he has lost count, which might be a more diplomatic approach. There has certainly been a large number of them since 1997. It is fairly clear that the previous four, five or six have not worked, and I do not suppose that this one will work any better, but no doubt the Minister will explain to us in due course why it will work.
	We on these Benches make it clear, however, that we believe that it is obvious that our borders are not secure. We face massive immigration, both legal and illegal, and the Government seem to lack any control over how it should be managed or any idea of what to do about it. Having said that, we are very grateful for the Minister's assurance about children and child safety—a matter which a number of noble Lords, particularly the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, have touched on very movingly. We very much look forward to seeing what the Minister will bring forward, and trust that we can all work constructively in that field.
	The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, seemed to imply in his opening remarks that there had been a stitch-up between the Conservative Front Bench and the Government in sending the Bill to Grand Committee. I assure him that, so far as I understand it, there was no such stitch-up; all the usual channels agreed that the Bill could be dealt with in Grand Committee. That is not always satisfactory, but I do believe that the Bill can be discussed productively and with some effect in that forum. I do not know why the noble Lords, Lord Avebury and Lord Dholakia, did not know about the Bill going to Grand Committee, but all the usual channels agreed, and I am not one to comment on how information is disseminated in the Liberal Democrat Party.
	As all those who have spoken have made clear, although the Bill is not long compared with the Bills that we are used to seeing emerge from that great legislative factory, the Home Office, it warrants a great deal of detailed scrutiny. In passing, we hope that the amount of the legislation coming from the Home Office will lessen somewhat now that large parts of that department have gone over to the Ministry of Justice, but perhaps that is over-optimistic. We will see what emerges in due course. The noble Lord can be assured from the remarks that have been made in this afternoon's brief debate that it will be given a great deal of detailed scrutiny—a point that was stressed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester.
	A considerable number of points will be put to the Minister, and no doubt she and her noble friends will be kept busy answering them in due course. As the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, put it, and as my noble friend Lady Anelay said in her opening remarks, she will also be pressed to come up with a consolidation measure in due course, because this area is becoming increasingly complicated and needs consolidation to make it easier for all to understand where we are going.
	I was grateful for the noble Baroness's detailed explanation of the Bill, and we will want in due course to pursue a number of points. I start with Clauses 1 to 4 and the new powers of detention at ports. We are sorry that the Government still resist the idea of a proper border police force, a matter which we will want to pursue. I am interested to know why Clauses 1 to 4 and, as I understand it, Clauses 24 and 30 do not apply in Scotland. Is that to do with the Sewel convention? When one is dealing with something relating to United Kingdom borders, it seems very odd to leave Scotland out of it. It leaves, dare I say it, a rather gaping whole.
	I turn to Clauses 5 to 15, on biometric registration. I was very interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Judd, had to say with his great experience as a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. He thought that there could be very considerable human rights issues in those clauses, and I should think that the whole House will want to explore that. I was grateful for the noble Baroness's assurance that she expected, and possibly even looked forward to, a detailed examination of those matters. Her argument seems to be that the old system and the documents that went out were insecure and that the new system would make life much easier for employers. We will have to see about that. However, I am grateful for her assurance that a copy of the code of practice mentioned in Clause 13 will be placed in the Library.
	I move on to the provisions on automatic deportation in Clause 31 and subsequent clauses. My noble friend reminded the House of the Prime Minister's—I do not know how I should describe them—remarks last year when all these Home Office matters blew up. He said that,
	"it is now time that anybody who is convicted of an imprisonable offence and who is a foreign national is deported".—(Official Report, Commons 3/5/06; col. 960.)
	My noble friend also reminded the House that she then took an opportunity to invite the Government to vote—in whichever Home Office Bill was going through at the time—for precisely what the Minister's right honourable friend the Prime Minister had suggested, but the Government duly voted against it. That is undoubtedly what the Prime Minister now wishes to do, but we will see at the end of the month, when we have a new Prime Minister, whether that remains the policy. The noble Baroness stressed that the provisions will always be subject to human rights legislation. If that is the case, I do not see quite how it fits in with the Prime Minister's remarks. Clause 39 and the following clauses are on data sharing and information, which the noble Baroness referred to as the data-sharing gateway. A number of issues here need considerable examination and we will certainly want to do that in due course.
	We are grateful, as I think the noble Baroness is aware, for the introduction in another place of the new clauses on the Border and Immigration Inspectorate. However, the provision needs some tightening up and we will certainly want to consider some amendments there. I have already mentioned the border police force and the question of children. We are all grateful for the noble Baroness's remarks on children, about whom she may want to say a bit more. On abuse of the spouse visa system, as my noble friend made clear in opening, we will try to assist the Government by tabling amendments to tighten up the rules.
	I think that we can look forward to a fairly busy Committee stage; we have something of the order of four days set aside for it. I trust that the noble Baroness and all her officials will be ready to help and advise the Committee on that occasion.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for a very interesting and stimulating debate. I shall start by confirming what the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and the noble Lord, Lord Henley, have said about this Bill going into Committee not on the Floor of the House. As I understand it from the Chief Whip, there was extensive consultation and therefore I regret to say to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, that it is not the case that this was imposed. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, accepted that the Bill would be considered in Grand Committee after a second round of consultation on the matter, and so I regret if noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches were not appropriately consulted. If I can give them any comfort, no one ever comes out entirely happy from the usual channels; it is a compromise. Compromises are honoured in this House; it is the way in which we do business, and it can never be a perfect science. But I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, agrees that usually we do not do too badly.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness. It is the practice not to send highly controversial Bills into Grand Committee. We did protest about this, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, will recall, in the case of the 2006 Act. At the beginning of the proceedings in Grand Committee, we said quite firmly that we did not like the idea of having controversial immigration legislation dealt with in Grand Committee. While the Government may have told my noble friend Lord Shutt about this, I certainly was not aware of it. However, the general views of the team which deals with Home Office affairs from this Front Bench were made perfectly clear a year ago, so the Government should have been aware of them.

Lord Hylton: My Lords, I do not see how there can be a compromise on a question of this kind. Either the Bill is taken on the Floor of the House or it is taken in Grand Committee. There is no halfway measure. I think it is very unsatisfactory to take this controversial Bill in Grand Committee.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, of course I hear what the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, says, and I join in wishing him a very happy birthday. However, I have to say that this is why we have the usual channels. The usual channels hold discussions and come to an agreement, and then all noble Lords in this House comply. That is the basis on which this House works, and I respectfully suggest that it is the only basis on which it can do so. I am conscious that we have now spent a considerable amount of time talking about this issue, and we need to move on.
	The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said that we must move forward without sentimentality but keep our humanity very much in mind. I strongly agree with him, and we believe that that is the process which the Government have adopted. It is not in the least surprising that there is a great deal of passion about these issues. We have heard a number of moving speeches, including those of the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, the right reverend Prelates on the Bishops' Bench, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. But we also have to keep a sense of balance and proportion, which was shown in the speech of the noble Earl, who acknowledged just how far we have come since 1997 and the strenuous efforts which have been made by this Government to improve the system and make it clearer, fairer and swifter. I was pleased to note that that was acknowledged in part by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, as well. So I was disappointed at the tone of some of the remarks about the Bill, such as that it is a "bad Bill" and a "squalid Bill", as well as some very deprecating comments about the bona fides of this Government. I assure the House that in looking at these issues the Government wholeheartedly believe in the words used in their document—fair, effective, transparent and trusted. Rebuilding confidence in our immigration system is essential. That is what we said when we published our document in July 2006 and that is what we believe.
	The Bill is the last part of a jigsaw and, after it is complete, there will be an opportunity for us to look at the issue of simplification. It is for that reason—I hope noble Lords noted it—that last week the Border and Immigration Agency launched a consultation on simplifying the immigration laws, something for which both Houses have been calling for some time. I would not, however, wish our discussions on the UK Borders Bill to be overshadowed by the fact that the important measures it contains will eventually be translated into new and comprehensive legislation. As I explained, the provisions in this Bill are a key part of the wider reform strategy for the agency, and the simplification project is designed to hone existing legislation and eradicate duplication. We will have an opportunity to consider that in good and proper time.
	We are setting out an ambitious agenda. Changes will not happen overnight—we have seen that in the past 10 years—but will be effected progressively as the agency continually focuses on performance. There have been significant transformations since even last year in how the Border and Immigration Agency deals with the deportation of foreign national prisoners. This has led to faster consideration of cases and a record high level of removals. The measures in this Bill will provide a framework to build further on this progress. So I do not agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, that the immigration system is still a mess.
	I acknowledge the kind comments that have been made in the past and today in relation to the improvements effected by the new system. The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and others commented on the improvements in training and the way in which we have dealt with that.
	A number of significant issues have been raised and I shall try to deal with as many as I can. Noble Lords should know that I have a detailed answer on every issue that has been raised but I am going to be extremely kind to your Lordships by not giving you all of those answers. However, I hope that I shall give you sufficient to indicate that not only have I been listening, but I have made a very careful note of everything that your Lordships have said. We will continue in the same way as we approach other Bills in the Home Office; we are very happy to have meetings. Indeed, I was glad that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, mentioned the meeting that was held yesterday, when many of us were in Committee on another Bill, with my honourable friend Liam Byrne to deal with some of these anxieties. He is very happy to do that.
	I turn now to some of the issues that have caused and excited some attention. The border police force was first raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and echoed by the noble Lords, Lord Henley, Lord Avebury and Lord Dholakia. The border management programme, which includes the police, customs and immigration, is our preferred approach to strengthen border security. Creating a single agency is likely to be disruptive and the international experience is that agency specialisation in drug detection and people smuggling can be lost, and we know the importance of retaining such expertise. We are trying to achieve a system where the border agencies can co-operate and operate in a beneficial, interchangeable way. We believe the Bill will enable us to do that. Immigration officers will act in support of police, not on their behalf. That is a very important distinction.
	Many existing police codes are not relevant to this power. In cases where they are, such as the operating procedures for immigration officers, we will make clear precisely what is expected of them, so we will have some clarity and delineation, a theme that I know has always echoed loud with the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay. We will make draft operating procedures available for Committee and publish the final documents once they are agreed with police colleagues, so noble Lords will see what we have in mind.
	I was asked questions by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester and my noble friend Lord Judd, with all his usual passion, commitment and devotion to this subject. I honour all those who have walked so steadfastly with this subject, notwithstanding its difficulties. I therefore hear the comments that have been made around the House about the Joint Committee on Human Rights, Clauses 1 to 4 and how immigration officers' power to detain should be retained. We will be able to look at that and the issues that have been mentioned with regard to PACE. We do not believe it is necessary or appropriate, for instance, for immigration officers exercising powers under those clauses to be subject to PACE codes of practice, but the power to detain is specifically intended to support the police, as I have discussed. We will be looking at the safeguards and how we should move forward.
	We were asked—among others, the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, my noble friend Lord Judd, the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester raised this issue—why the Bill does not contain a specific timeframe for the consideration of deportation. We agree that it is important to serve a deportation order at the earliest possible opportunity to avoid detaining foreign nationals here unnecessarily at the end of their sentences. We will draft provisions to deal with the issue. Our current target is to consider deportation within the six months ahead of release, so that before they are released there will be a determination. We hope that these issues will assist.
	I assure the House that we will look carefully at the concerns of the Joint Committee on Human Rights about the Bill. I am grateful to the committee for its report, which sets out some important issues that we will have to address, and the Government will produce a written response to it. I am happy to say that we will cover arguments in detail in Committee, such as police codes, oversight of detention and the potential for de facto racial profiling through the biometric provision—something I know the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and I are particularly keen to ensure that we address, but there are others in the House who have the same attention to detail. There are a number of noble Lords who will deal with this, not least the noble Lord, Lord Lester, who I see sitting in his place. There is also the question of why there is no specific timeframe. We will come back to these important issues, as I am sure they will have to be discussed.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, asked for evidence on illegal working and biometrics. The evidence provided by National Car Parks, a national UK employer, at the public evidence session in the other place clearly indicated that employers are often presented with forged documents. Our own experience bears that out. Forged documents take many different forms: the use of counterfeit documents that are totally false; documents where the page containing the person's details has been substituted; documents in which a false stamp like a UK visa has been inserted; the use of stolen blank documents; the use of documents that have been issued by an authority but have been fraudulently obtained; and the use of documents by lookalikes or impostors. We have had to face all those issues. I will be able to give the noble Baroness some details about that. Three hundred and fifty-five counterfeit documents were detected by immigration enforcement staff between January and October 2006. Two hundred and twenty-six documents with substituted bio-pages and 161 with falsified stamps were detected in the same period. I hope she gets a flavour of the enormity of the problem we will face.
	The biometric immigration document will be looked at very carefully. It is an extension of the existing powers, where those subject to immigration control are issued with proof of their status. Public officials who ask to see biometric immigration documents must clearly do so in accordance with the Race Relations Act and Article 14 of the ECHR. I know that we will come back to that.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Stern, referred, among a number of issues, to the view of the Joint Committee on Human Rights on victims of trafficking. I mentioned the victims of trafficking in my opening remarks. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary signed the European convention against human trafficking on 23 March. We made absolutely clear our commitment and published a UK action plan. Amendments to legislation will be required but we need to get this right because we all have the same intent. If we are unable to do that, we have to make sure that the articles of the convention can be implemented successfully, which will inevitably take time. But we are concentrating on implementation.
	I heard very clearly what the noble Baroness and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, said about the reasons that would be used for deportation. We need to look at the schedule, because they do make sense. We will be able to explore why we say that when we consider this further.
	I ask noble Lords to acknowledge that the question of resources and how we are dealing with the legacy are being dealt with expeditiously and that we are coming to grips with them. The programme is under way, with the aim of dealing with cases within the five-year period specified by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary in the IND review on 25 July last year. We are prioritising those cases which may be a risk to the public and will then focus on those who can more easily be removed. Thus, I hope we can decide each case speedily but also on its merits. The chief executive of the Border and Immigration Agency will be providing an update to the Home Affairs Committee in due course.
	I was not surprised that there was a great deal of concentration on how we deal with children. I hope that I was able to indicate that the Government take this issue very seriously. We remain of the view that it is proportionate not to grant a right of appeal to the tribunal where asylum is refused but leave of 12 months or less is granted on other grounds—for example, discretionary leave granted to children. If a child seeks further leave when the discretionary leave ends and it is still considered that they merit asylum, that claim can be considered again. If refused on appeal, right would then exist.
	There are other, deeper issues about how safeguarding should work. What about the provisions of Section 9? We were asked about the pilots that came to an end in December 2005; I think that that is the right date, but I will check it. There has been no further use of those pilots since.
	There is a lot for us to think about, a lot of work to do. I hope that when we have an opportunity to reflect on those provisions in a mature and considered way, we will be able to look again at how we can move this issue forward. We do not remove children from the United Kingdom unless adequate reception and accommodation arrangements exist in their country of origin.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, I remind the Minister that her honourable friend Mr Byrne said, in answer to Question 498 before the Joint Committee on Human Rights, that it was his responsibility to publish the results of the pilots and that it was incumbent on him to understand the pilots in detail. Why does he need a whole year to do that?

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I think that Mr Byrne has had to take a view in relation to how to improve the system in the round. Just as I hope that there will be a celebration after what I have said—and I am clear that there is—I hope that noble Lords will understand better, when we come forward with the considered position, why it has taken a little time. If we give satisfaction, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, will think that it was worth waiting for.
	I know that there are concerns about how in practice Clause 16 will apply to children. We will not pull children out of school to attend reporting conferences far away; reporting by telephone may be used for children and reporting could be done outside school hours. We will have an opportunity to look at all those practical things.
	Evaluation of Section 9 is feeding into the children strategy. I cannot pre-empt the findings of the validation and how we will react to them, but I assure noble Lords that those issues have been given a lot of time and consideration.
	Lastly, although it is probably normally inappropriate to respond to particular cases, may I say how much we were affected by the case to which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, referred in relation to the breast-feeding mother separated from her babies? We recognise that a breakdown in process led to mistakes in that case; investigating what happened to ensure that similar mistakes do not happen in future is a matter of some priority to us. The Border and Immigration Agency believes that in almost all circumstances the best interests of children are served by being with their parents. There may on occasion be a slip between cup and lip; that slip can be painful and difficult to deal with; but I assure noble Lords that what the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, said of this Government is not true. There is not a deliberate policy to, in essence, bring hurt, dysfunction and harm to people in this country or, indeed, to anyone who is fortunate enough to come and stay among us.

The Lord Bishop of Winchester: My Lords, I do not think that any of us would think that it was deliberate. The question at issue is whether those are the effects of the policy.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I am very grateful to hear that that is the general view. I simply say to the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, that maybe she should look very carefully indeed at language and at what the report may actually say.

The Lord Bishop of Winchester: My Lords, will the Minister respond to the point that I made about the effects of the policy, deliberate or not?

Baroness Stern: My Lords, will the Minister consider that I was quoting literally word for word from the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights on the treatment of asylum seekers? They were certainly not words that I would personally take responsibility for unless they were in a report that we had all agreed.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I am very heartened to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, say that. Of course we have to look at the outcome of our policy, but the right reverend Prelate should look at the outcome of all our policies, not just in relation to immigration, and consider the sterling work that we do through DfID and all the other efforts and sterling work done by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and here, right across the piece, to give succour and support to children and vulnerable families. Safeguarding children goes right across the board. I remind the right reverend Prelate of the work done by the wonderful local authorities up and down this country, which, when our provision is not available under the immigration system, make available appropriate succour. Look at what we do and not just what we say. If judged fairly, I think this Government will have a very proud record of giving succour to those most in need.
	On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Grand Committee.

Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill [HL]

Report received.
	Clause 1 [Protection against forced marriage: England and Wales]:

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: moved Amendment No. 1:
	Clause 1, page 1, line 15, leave out "deciding" and insert "ascertaining"

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment No. 6. Amendment No. 1 makes changes to the England and Wales provisions which set out that the court must have regard to a person's well-being and the need to secure it when considering whether to make a forced marriage protection order. The amendment replaces the word "deciding" with the word "ascertaining". Amendment No. 6 makes the same amendment to the corresponding provisions in Schedule 1 dealing with the content of orders in Northern Ireland.
	In deciding whether to make a forced marriage protection order and what form that order should take, the court must go through a two-stage process. The first stage is the evaluation of the victim's well-being; the second is the decision whether to exercise its powers to make an order. The High Court judges whom we consulted on the Bill suggested that the word "ascertaining" better describes this first stage and captures the notion of assessing a person's well-being.
	I consider that the drafting change made by these amendments better expresses our purpose and is necessary for the clarity of the Bill. I am grateful to the judges for their support. I hope that noble Lords will feel able to support these changes. I beg to move.

Baroness Butler-Sloss: My Lords, I support the insertion of "ascertaining"; it is a much better word.

Lord Lester of Herne Hill: I agree, my Lords.

Baroness Verma: My Lords, these Benches welcome the amendment, which improves the original drafting. We should be grateful that the High Court judges were consulted and were on hand to give this advice. The delayed Grand Committee and Report enabled them to do so, thereby providing your Lordships with their much respected wisdom and knowledge on these matters.

On Question, amendment agreed to.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: moved Amendment No. 2:
	Clause 1, page 2, line 22, leave out from "who" to "marriage" in line 29 and insert "are, or may become, involved in other respects as well as (or instead of) respondents who force or attempt to force, or may force or attempt to force, a person to enter into a marriage;
	(c) other persons who are, or may become, involved in other respects as well as respondents of any kind.
	(3) For the purposes of subsection (2) examples of involvement in other respects are—
	(a) aiding, abetting, counselling, procuring, encouraging or assisting another person to force, or to attempt to force, a person to enter into a marriage; or(b) conspiring to force, or to attempt to force, a person to enter into a"

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I will also speak to Amendments Nos. 3 and 7. The Bill gives the courts a wide discretion in the type of injunctions they can make for the purpose of protecting a person from a forced marriage. This approach is important in ensuring that the courts are able to deal flexibly and sensitively with cases as their individual circumstances demand.
	New Section 63B(2) provides for orders to be directed either at named respondents in a primary role forcing or attempting to force a person into marriage or to other named respondents in a secondary role, for example, aiding and abetting.
	Through consultation on the Bill with the High Court judges who deal with forced marriage cases, we have become aware that enabling orders to be directed only to named respondents might be too restrictive. The Bill provides that third parties who are not named in an order, but who undermine the effect of an order by taking action to force a marriage on behalf of others, are subject to the power of arrest. However, senior members of the judiciary have suggested that this might not at present be sufficiently clear either to deter would-be perpetrators or to ensure that police officers arrested them when necessary, and it could therefore prove ineffective.
	Amendment No. 2 addresses this issue by amending new Section 63B to enable orders to be addressed to a third category of unnamed persons who are, or may become, involved in other respects. This will mean that orders may be addressed to any person or indeed to categories of person, such as the family, who are, or may become, involved in other respects in relation to a forced marriage. The order must be for the purposes of protection as specified in Section 63A(1). As in the current draft of the Bill, the amendment sets out that involvement in other respects would include actions such as aiding, abetting, counselling, procuring or encouraging another person to force, or to attempt to force, someone into marriage.
	Amendment No. 3 amends Section 63H so that powers of arrest may be attached to orders addressed to any person who is not a respondent but to whom an order is directed, as long as the tests in Section 63H(4) are met. The amendment therefore clarifies the policy already embodied in the Bill regarding the actions of third parties.
	Amendment No. 7 makes the same changes as Amendment No. 2 to the provisions in Schedule 1 dealing with forced marriage protection orders in Northern Ireland. There is no need for an equivalent to Amendment No. 3 in Northern Ireland, as breach of an order in Northern Ireland is a criminal offence. The amendments are intended to replicate the scope of orders that have already been made by the High Court within the inherent jurisdiction and the wardship jurisdiction in relation to forced marriage cases.
	I will say a few words about how orders to un-named parties will work in practice, as I am sure that will interest noble Lords. It will be for the court to decide in each individual case whether it is necessary to extend an order to the third category of un-named persons. That would be likely to be in circumstances where there was evidence that members of the extended family or the wider community might be involved in forcing a marriage, meaning that it was not possible to identify all the possible respondents. Noble Lords will be aware that orders under Part 4 are always made against named parties. Enforcement of those orders relies on the ability to prove that the respondent is aware of the terms of the order. When it is attached to an order, a power of arrest is delivered to the local police station together with a statement showing that the respondent has been served with the order or informed of its terms. Orders made against named parties under Part 4A will follow that procedure.
	The position in the law regarding orders made against un-named respondents will remain that a person may be committed for contempt only if they are aware of the order that they are breaching. As orders made against unnamed respondents cannot be personally served, it will be for the courts to decide, on evidence, whether the person is aware of an order and is in contempt. The mechanics of serving the order will be set out in rules of court, and that could be supported by a practice direction setting out standard terms of an order and practice.
	The power of arrest will also be subject to certain safeguards to ensure that it is used appropriately. Once arrested, the person must be brought before the court within 24 hours, and it will be for the court to decide on the evidence available whether it considers that the person was aware of the contents of the order. There will also be a right of appeal. I hope that noble Lords are assured that we have given careful consideration to putting in place the necessary safeguards to ensure that those provisions work in practice. The amendments make important changes to strengthen and clarify the protection that the Bill offers to those threatened by a forced marriage, and I hope that they will be supported in this House. I beg to move.

Lord Lester of Herne Hill: My Lords, although this is in form my Bill, a Private Member's Bill, I am glad to say that in substance it has become not my property but that of the House and is really a Ministry of Justice Bill. It has been very much improved. I want to try to explain the welcome shift that these amendments make. In the original design of the Bill, I envisaged some new civil wrong, or tort, with a right to claim compensation under a new head. I was persuaded that that was wrong and that it was more sensible to have a Bill that was preventative and not one that provided for new money claims. The object is preventative or prophylactic, so it is important to spread the definition of who may be caught by the Bill widely, so that the courts, in their flexible jurisdiction, can deal with them.
	In the Spycatcher case, the courts were concerned about the effect on third parties, especially the media, in relation to injunctions, and they began to develop a wider notion of contempt of court. It is very important that that not be left vague in this Bill. Legal certainty should apply and everyone should know that they are subject to the jurisdiction of the county courts as well as the High Court. It is why I very much welcome that this is being spelled out clearly as a signal to everyone who might be involved in the deeply antisocial practices involved in forcing marriages.
	I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, said in welcoming the fact that judges have been consulted about this. I pay tribute to Sir Mark Potter, the president of the Family Division, and to Mr Justice Munby and Mr Justice Singer, who have particular experience. I welcome the consultation with the Family Law Practitioners' Association. As a Back-Bencher, my "attorney-general" on this Bill has been Sapnara Khatun, who I am glad to see present today. She is a very experienced practitioner who has given advice throughout. I support these amendments, based on her assurance that they make sense.

Lord Russell-Johnston: My Lords, the noble Lord knows that a number of people believe that forced marriage should be criminalised and that offering civil remedies is insufficient. After all, it is an act surrounded by criminality. Often it is preceded by kidnapping; the act itself involves rape, which is a crime; thereafter, there is often domestic violence; and, as we noted from yesterday's newspaper reports, so-called honour killings can follow. As I understand it, my noble friend has chosen this route because the Government have accepted that it is a viable route for legislation but do not yet feel that an attempt to criminalise would be the proper course to take. Is that correct?

Lord Lester of Herne Hill: My Lords, it is not really correct. The decision to seek civil protection rather than new crimes was not taken because I felt that that was the Government's position; it was taken after the Government decided not to create new criminal offences. But I thought that they were right in reaching that conclusion. The tragic case to which my noble friend referred, that of Banaz Mahmod, who was murdered by way of what is called an honour killing, illustrates the problems of using the criminal process as the main way of tackling a major social evil.
	There is already plenty of criminal law to tackle murder, kidnapping, abduction, rape and all the other evil manifestations associated with forcing people into marriage against their will. Terrible things follow in some of these appalling cases. The problem with the criminal process is that, although there is plenty of existing criminal law, there is a criminal burden of proof and a criminal standard of proof; the court is a criminal court and is held in public, with police and a jury brought into play. It has not proved to be an effective way of tackling a major social problem.
	People who deal with these cases daily tell me that often the victim does not want to dishonour her family by having a public and punitive hearing. One of the great advantages of the family law approach is that the court can sit in private, sensitively and in a way that will, I hope, reconcile the victim with her or his family, while providing effective protection to put a stop to a course of conduct that may lead to real tragedy. It was originally my decision to move into the civil area, not because I thought that the Government could not be persuaded in any particular way but because I thought that it was the right approach. That approach was supported, not just by me—I am a white man, the least qualified person to make judgments of that kind—but by the Southall Black Sisters, a whole variety of women's organisations, including Asian women's organisations, and children's organisations. If that had not been the case, I would not have pushed the Bill any further.
	I hope that is an adequate explanation. I am not saying it would be inconceivable to have a new crime; other countries have done that. Although female genital mutilation is a crime, there has not been a single prosecution, for all kinds of reasons. This shows that the criminal process is not the best process, even though, with forced marriages and honour killings, one needs to have serious crimes for serious wrongs. I hope that that answers the question.

Lord Russell-Johnston: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend, but it is not right to give the impression that there is unanimity in the view that this matter should not be criminalised. There are a number of significant people who work in the area, both in the police and among the NGOs, who feel that that is the right course.

Lord Lester of Herne Hill: My Lords, I fully accept that. But the spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not too sure that it is right.

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, could I gently remind noble Lords that it is Report stage?

Baroness Verma: My Lords, this is a vital addition to the Bill. It will ensure that a clear message is sent out to all those who may be involved in the wider context of forcing an individual into marriage that the victim will have the protection of the law from all those who carry out coercion and violence in order to bring about a forced marriage. We on these Benches welcome this addition to the Bill.

Baroness Butler-Sloss: My Lords, I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, said about Sapnara Khatun, who has done noble work in relation to this Bill, and with whom I also have been in frequent contact.
	This series of amendments, accepted by the Government, is exactly what is needed. It shows a very useful co-operation between the High Court judiciary and those in Parliament wishing to get the best out of a Bill. This degree of co-operation is enormously valuable. These amendments widen the scope of the Bill and will meet a need. If anyone has any concern that someone who is not entirely aware of a particular order might be found guilty of contempt of court, they can be utterly assured—I declare an interest as a former judge—that a judge will not find anybody guilty of contempt, or send anybody to prison, unless the criminal standard of proof has been reached. If a third party is caught by an order and can show that they really did not know, or there is the possibility that they did not know, I do not think the force of the Contempt of Court Act would apply. But it is an excellent series of amendments.
	Finally, should this be a criminal rather than a civil matter? I had thought at one stage that it should be criminal. I was persuaded by the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, that it should not. Having heard of the Southall Black Sisters, it became obvious that it should not. If it is to gain widespread support, it is better to be a civil matter; it is better for the victims. But it does not mean that the criminal law does not apply. If a girl is kept prisoner in her room, or she is intimidated, or she is assaulted, or a number of other acts are performed that are capable of being treated as part of offences against the law, the criminal law will intervene. Nowadays, the police are well aware of the seriousness of honour killings—there was the Kurd case yesterday, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill—and I know that they are anxious to co-operate. Consequently, I have very little doubt that the rigour of the criminal law will be applied to any case in which the victim is prepared to take part. But, again, as the noble Lord, Lord Lester, said, it is rare for a victim to wish to have her family sent to prison. What she wants is not to be forced into a marriage against her will. That is what the Bill is aiming to do, and I unreservedly support the amendments.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I am extremely grateful to everyone who has contributed to the debate. I add my thanks to Sapnara Khatun. Obviously, we should not acknowledge people who are visiting us in the Chamber but, at the same time, it is great to watch someone squirm with embarrassment.
	I agree with the remarks about the judiciary and the support that it has given. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Russell-Johnston, that here the noble Lord, Lord Lester, has not followed the Government but the Government have followed him.
	I approached this matter by being open-minded about which way we should go. The advantage of this Bill was brought home to me in the consultations that I undertook with those involved in the judiciary, with legal practitioners, with voluntary organisations and, perhaps most importantly, with the victims themselves.
	The Bill provides us with three special and important things. First, having within the Family Law Act the idea that forced marriage is wrong may help us with the most important thing of all, which is to deter people from doing it: it is an offence; it is not allowed; and it should not be practised. That will be significant in preventing people from even thinking that somehow this practice may be acceptable in our society.
	The second benefit of the Bill is that such cases will take place in the family courts, which means that discussions can be held in private. That will enable what we and many of the victims want to see brought about: forms of reconciliation with their families. The judge will be able to explain what cannot and will not be allowed, and that will happen not by being broadcast within a community but quietly and privately. At the same time, as the noble and learned Baroness said, the offence will carry the full weight of the law behind it and, of course, if a criminal offence is committed, the criminal law will be brought in.
	When I talked to the people whom I had the privilege of consulting, it became clear to me that the outcome of the Home Office consultation on whether we should introduce this as a criminal offence was correct. It was clear that that would not command support and, perhaps more importantly, going back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lester, it would not be used and therefore would not have the value that we would wish to see it have. We hope that this measure will provide great benefit and we will monitor the situation. I hope that the noble Lord will feel reassured by that. I know that he has taken a great interest in this issue for many years and I pay tribute to him for that. I hope that, in strengthening the legislation, the amendments will be acceptable.

On Question, amendment agreed to.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: moved Amendment No. 3:
	Clause 1, page 5, line 36, at end insert—
	"( ) In this section "respondent" includes any person who is not a respondent but to whom an order is directed."
	On Question, amendment agreed to.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: moved Amendment No. 4:
	Clause 1, page 6, line 27, leave out "or"

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 5. These amendments make changes to Section 63J, which provides that, if a person has failed to comply with a forced marriage protection order where a power of arrest is not attached, an interested party may apply for a warrant for their arrest. The section currently provides that an interested party is either the person protected by the order or a third party who applied for the order on their behalf.
	Following further consideration of this section and, again, in consultation with the High Court judges who hear these cases, we have identified that an amendment is needed to extend the categories of persons who can apply for an arrest warrant. Under the current provision, if a third party had applied for the order but was not available to apply for the arrest warrant, the only person left who could apply would be the victim. If a victim did not apply for the original order, perhaps because of fear, intimidation or because they did not want to get the family into trouble, they are extremely unlikely to apply for a warrant of arrest, regardless of whether there had been a breach of the order.
	The amendment provides for a further category of applicant who can make an application with the leave of the court. Requiring leave will mean that the court must be satisfied that the person applying has sufficient interest in the case for the application to proceed. This provision would also mirror the categories of person who can apply for an order in the first place.
	Noble Lords will note that no equivalent amendment has been proposed in relation to Northern Ireland because the methods for dealing with a breach of order in Northern Ireland are different from those in England and Wales. It is therefore not necessary to replicate the provision for Northern Ireland.
	I hope that noble Lords will agree that this change is necessary to offer the best protection to the victim. I beg to move.

Baroness Verma: My Lords, with Amendments Nos. 2, 3 and 7, what would have been a dangerous loophole has now been closed. We have supported the Bill from Second Reading onwards, and we support the additions that are being made at this stage by the noble Baroness. The Minister and her team are working hard to transform this Bill into a workable and durable piece of legislation. That in itself is to be supported. I urge the Government to allow the proper amount of time to be spent on this Bill in another place.
	A number of serious additions have been made both at this stage and, on the independence for the judiciary, in Grand Committee. That is testament to the House that however valuable the principles behind a Bill, just as in this case on the important effects of this Bill, a rushed Bill runs the serious risk of being insufficient. I commend the improvements that have been made to it so far, and the important and constructive debate that we have had across the House. I believe that all noble Lords have sought to achieve the very best outcome for those whose lives will be affected and, I sincerely hope, improved by the measures in the Bill. I should like to send the Bill to another place with my recommendations, but with a warning that it must be considered seriously and given proper parliamentary time.

Lord Lester of Herne Hill: My Lords, I put my name to the amendments and I agree with them. I shall leave the valedictory part of my remarks until later in the debate. I am glad that the Official Opposition supported my original Bill on Second Reading, and I am glad that although there was a certain degree of what I termed grumpiness at a particular stage, that subsequently disappeared.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, in addressing the issue of sufficient time, I shall also leave my valedictory stuff until later. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, and to the team on the Benches opposite in another place who have offered time to ensure that there will be sufficient scrutiny of this legislation. I am extremely grateful to them for doing so.

On Question, amendment agreed to.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: moved Amendment No. 5:
	Clause 1, page 6, line 28, at end insert "; or
	(c) any other person;but no application may be made under subsection (2) by a person falling within paragraph (c) without the leave of the relevant judge"
	On Question, amendment agreed to.

Lord Geddes: My Lords, before calling Amendment No. 5A, I advise your Lordships that in Amendment No. 5B, which has been grouped with Amendment No. 5A, there is an error. In the second line of the text of the amendment, after the words "expenditure on" there should be inserted "training and guidance".

Baroness Verma: moved Amendment No. 5A:
	Clause 1, page 8, line 29, at end insert—
	"63PA Applications
	The Secretary of State shall compile and publish annually a report recording the number and cost of applications in the preceding financial year."

Baroness Verma: My Lords, I tabled the amendment in response to the Minister's comments in Committee that the number of applications made could be recorded centrally to allow the Government to ascertain the volume and use of the orders. The Minister noted that such records are already kept for domestic violence applications and that they could be used for the orders in this legislation.
	The amendment would place a duty on the Secretary of State to publish an annual report on the volume and cost of applications made during the year. The amendment has been tabled simply to enable debate on the subject. It is important to ensure that we are sending this legislation to the other place in good health and well considered. It is important to consider the long-term implementation of these orders and the long-term accountability of the success of the legislation. We must not be frightened to admit that there may be some problems with implementing it on the ground. It is important to anticipate such problems and seek assurances that they do not occur. I suggest that the Government could in addition collate the costs of processing applications in order that resources allocated to the prevention of forced marriage—if they are to be allocated for that specific purpose—will be used most cost-effectively. I await the Minister's response with interest. I beg to move.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her amendment. In terms of procedure, I think that she has de-grouped Amendments Nos. 5A and 5B, so I will take them separately—at least, that is what I assume has happened.
	As with any piece of legislation, implementation of the Bill requires a significant programme of work. Monitoring and evaluation of the applications made under new Part 4A will be an important part of implementation. The Government are committed to ensuring that appropriate monitoring of the number of applications and their cost is carried out. This is standard practice in the implementation of any key piece of legislation. The number of non-molestation and occupation orders made each year is published annually in the judicial statistics report by my department. Similar data will be made available for orders made under new Part 4A. This will give an important indication of the scale of the problem, which we do not have at present, and of how these applications are being dealt with in the courts.
	As I have already touched on implementation, it may be helpful if I speak a little more generally about the Government's implementation plans and what arrangements will be put in place to ensure that this information can be collected. The first task will be to develop the necessary court rules which will put in place the procedure for dealing with these cases. My department will take forward drafting of the rules and necessary court forms in conjunction with the Family Procedure Rule Committee, an experienced body of judiciary and practitioners who are experts in family law matters. The rules and forms will also be consulted on before they are finalised. Another key part of implementation will be to ensure that the appropriate IT is in place in the courts, so that court staff can process applications, deal with them effectively and collate the necessary statistics needed for monitoring. My officials are exploring the specific IT requirements and assessing the costs of those changes.
	It is difficult to predict exactly what the volume of applications will be under the new legislation. The indication is that it will be relatively small, and the impact on the legal aid budget will therefore be minimal. My officials will work with the Legal Services Commission to assess the likely impact on legal aid of the new legislation. I hope that that gives the noble Baroness a sense of the implementation process and programme we have in place, that it reassures her that the issues she raises regarding the need to monitor and make available data on the number of applications will be taken forward, and that she will be able to withdraw her amendment.

Baroness Verma: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her response. I will look closely in Hansard at what she has said and am grateful that she takes my amendment seriously. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Baroness Verma: moved Amendment No. 5B:
	Clause 1, page 9, line 11, at end insert—
	"63RA Training and guidance
	The Secretary of State shall lay before Parliament biannually a report detailing the expenditure on for the preceding two years and projected expenditure for the next year."

Lord Geddes: My Lords, I apologise to the House for inadvertently grouping Amendments Nos. 5A and 5B, which I now understand have been de-grouped. For the record, I advise the House that there is an error in the second line of the text. After the words "expenditure on", there should be inserted "training and guidance".

Baroness Verma: My Lords, the amendment would place a requirement on the Secretary of State to publish a report every two years, detailing expenditure on training and guidance for the previous two years and providing a forecast of the projected guidance and expenditure that will be given for the next year. While I realise that the amendment may leave something to be desired in terms of technical drafting, it serves its purpose at this stage as a probing amendment, tabled in response to the broad concerns that became apparent from my reading of the consultation documents published just before the Whitsun Recess. I thank the Odysseus Trust for making those documents available. I was glad to have the chance to look at them, if not before Committee, then in time for Report.
	The purpose of the amendment is to probe the Government's plans on the provision of guidance and training. Who do they anticipate will be given guidance, and how will it be disseminated? Does the Minister anticipate that that guidance will be mandatory in all police forces? Will there be police officers with special responsibility for or knowledge of forced marriage? Does the Department for Education and Skills support the dissemination to schools of information about forced marriages? The matter of country-wide guidance could be important, given the rapidity of movement in cases such as these. If a victim were to flee to another part of the country for safety, a part of the country that was not accustomed to the culture surrounding forced marriages, it would be important that his or her claims were taken seriously. The terrible, tragic case of Banaz Mahmod will undoubtedly focus our minds on the importance of swift, effective and well understood action by the police when such cases are reported.
	I hope that in setting up the provisions for training and guidance, the Government will ensure that voluntary, locally based organisations are included and that guidance is implemented in co-operation with the communities it seeks to help. It is important to remember the double-edged nature of this issue. While the threat in cases of forced marriage may well come from within the communities themselves, it is often people in those communities who are most keen to protect and ensure the safety of young women and men who may face coercion or the threat of violence.
	The sensitive handling of these cases on the ground will be the true test of the mettle of this legislation. I welcome the comments made by the Minister in Committee that the Government understand that it is essential to deliver the message that,
	"we want to deal with criminals, not criminalise communities".—[Official Report, 10/5/07; col. GC 267.]
	Even there, we must tread carefully and be careful that this legislation is not designed to criminalise but to protect.
	I was grateful to the Minister for her remarks in a meeting when she stated that the Government would publish a report on the progress of training and guidance. That will be valuable to all concerned, who will make great use of the information available. I look forward to the Minister's response. I hope that it will provide your Lordships' House with a more detailed description of the plans for establishing and integrating guidance and training at all levels of the community. I beg to move.

Lord Lester of Herne Hill: My Lords, I think this will be the last time that I speak on the Bill because Third Reading will be formal. I begin by paying tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Verma. I appreciate her reasons for tabling this amendment, and I am grateful that she mentioned the Odysseus Trust because Kate Beattie, in particular, has done an enormous amount of work—through consultation and otherwise—and it is right to mention that.
	It is excellent that the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, is in her place. She runs the Judicial Appointments Commission and no doubt has more expertise about training than most. As a former part-time judge, I say that the Judicial Studies Board now has an extremely well developed programme for training. When I came to the Bar a depressingly long time ago, the idea that judges needed training was considered to be blasphemy or sacrilege. These days all senior judges, and junior ones too, realise that they need all the help they can get to develop skills with new legislation. In this case, it is particularly important because the expertise has remained within the High Court, and I suspect that County Court judges will be on the receiving end of most cases because those are the most user-friendly courts where there is access to justice. Those judges will require the kind of training from which I benefited when I sat as a judge. I was very impressed by the Government's training programmes on the Human Rights Act and the Civil Partnership Act which were run by the Judicial Studies Board. They were most beneficial. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about judicial training. It is not the business of the Government; it is simply the business of the Government to help the training to take place.
	The Forced Marriage Unit has admirable guidance, but it is not statutory. As we discovered when we went around the country, one of the problems was that although the guidance was good, it lacked impact and force. I welcome the fact that the guidance will now be given real force and will not be bureaucratically handled. I very much hope that the Minister will be able to deal with that.
	Perhaps I may make one other valedictory comment. At the end of the Second Reading debate on 26 January—a remarkable debate in which so many noble Lords spoke and ensured that this House would be a catalyst for reform, which is one of our vital functions in addition to scrutiny; I do not think that such a debate would have taken place in the other place in the same way—after saying that the Bill could be improved, I said:
	"We hope that the Bill will be supported from all sides of the House and that the Government will recognise the need to enact this measure urgently as a matter of high parliamentary priority so that it may become law by the end of this year. We have waited too long, and too many vulnerable children and young adults have been grossly abused for us to delay further".—[Official Report, 26/1/07; col. 1324.]
	I believe that those concluding words will now come to pass. They will do so because the Minister, in particular, has been more than a midwife. Her team, in what is now the Ministry of Justice, has been brilliant and outstanding in taking a simple idea and writing what was five pages in 18 pages in much better form.
	The Official Opposition have been co-operative throughout, and my party has been generous enough not to seek to make narrow party-political capital out of this being called a Liberal Democrat measure. We welcome the fact that the Government will effectively make this a government Bill in the other place. The Prime Minister personally has had conversations in particular with the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, to whom I also pay tribute—she has been a silent and strong supporter of the Bill. All of that means that there is a very real chance that a Private Member's Bill will become the law of the land very quickly. For all of that, I express my gratitude.

Baroness Butler-Sloss: My Lords, it has crossed my mind that this is an egg that has been fertilized and placed in the embryo of the Government with very happy results. It is a combination of not only the Judicial Studies Board but also, no doubt, a practice direction from the president of the Family Division which could guide the judges to a proper way of dealing with the Bill when, as I hope, the other place finds time to make it law.
	I assume from what the Minister has said that the Family Procedure Rules Committee will be looking at the rules. It seems to me likely that the president will produce some sort of practice direction that could then be used by the Judicial Studies Board in its training of circuit judges to the appropriate standard. But it seems to me that today is a very happy day.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: I begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for her amendment. She has rightly cited the need for proper training and guidance as a critical issue if we are going to tackle the problem of forced marriage and ensure that the Bill is implemented successfully. The Bill provides a power for the Secretary of State to issue guidance on the Bill and on the issue of forced marriage generally. That will enable us, first, to put the guidance already issued by the Forced Marriage Unit—to which I have paid tribute many times before, but I shall continue to do so as long as I possibly can—on a statutory footing.
	It might be helpful if I say a little on the work that is already carried out by the Forced Marriage Unit on issuing guidance. In the past year, the Forced Marriage Unit has issued guidance to health professionals, and it has undertaken an awareness-raising campaign for registrars. Guidance was issued to social workers in 2004, followed by guidance for police and teachers in 2005. Revised guidelines for social workers are due to be out before the end of the year, and will be in two volumes: one for social workers for dealing with children and young people; and one for social workers dealing with vulnerable adults. The guidelines are disseminated at outreach events, conferences and workshops organised by the Forced Marriage Unit, and are also available for downloading from its website.
	In practice, the power to issue guidance is likely to mean republishing existing guidance to place it on a statutory footing, for the reasons that your Lordships have already given. The costs associated with re-publication should be small, but we will keep that under review. Fresh guidance published by the Forced Marriage Unit once the new Bill comes into force will usually be issued under this new power. We will also keep under review any additional costs associated with guidance specific to the Bill, which will be a matter for my department in consultation with the Home Office, the Foreign Office, the Forced Marriage Unit and other relevant departments, including the Department for Education and Skills. The DfES has supported the Bill, and we will in the usual course of events discuss with it its work in issuing guidance to schools.
	Training, particularly judicial training, which the noble and learned Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Lester, mentioned, will be built into our wider plans for implementing the provisions that extend jurisdiction to the county courts. As noble Lords will know from our discussions in Committee, it is important to provide for county courts to have the jurisdiction to hear forced marriage cases to make it easier for victims to get the protection that they need. At the same time, it is extremely important that we ensure that cases heard in the county courts receive expert and sensitive treatment; the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, alluded to this when she spoke to her amendments.
	Officials in the department are already considering how we might undertake a phased rollout of the jurisdiction to the county courts. The aim of such an approach is to enable us to focus initially on a limited number of courts in different regions across the country, building up expertise in these areas. The number of cases that are brought will be a determining factor in deciding how many courts we will eventually need to handle all the cases efficiently and effectively. The approach taken in implementing the provisions that enable civil partnerships to be dissolved is an example of this type of approach. The noble Lord, Lord Lester, referred to that legislation. In this case, my department agreed with the president of the Family Division that initially 10 centres across England and Wales would be able to deal with dissolution. We shall similarly consult the president on the number and location of county courts initially able to hear forced marriage cases, ensuring that we have a spread of county courts across the country and in urban areas where the demand is likely to be higher.
	We anticipate that the Judicial Studies Board, which is responsible for judicial training, will undertake the necessary training for judges in these courts. My officials will discuss with the board the cost of training and the provision of funding. I will ask the JSB to consider, in the light of its other training plans, how it could incorporate within its existing provisions the training that it considers to be necessary. After initial training, it is likely that forced marriage training will be included in the usual refresher courses. The board publishes an annual report that sets out how much has been spent on judicial training. This will ensure that the cost of judicial training associated with the Bill is transparent, as the noble Baroness would wish. In addition to formal JSB training, the judges whom we have consulted on the Bill have suggested that forced marriage cases might be a good candidate for a practice direction, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has suggested. Such a direction would provide guidance on the best practice for hearing these cases. As the noble and learned Baroness has said, this will be a matter for the president of the Family Division.
	Training for court staff will be a matter for my department and Her Majesty's Courts Service, as is standard practice for the implementation of new legislation that affects the courts. This will include the drafting of staff training materials, the delivery of training to court staff, and the development of information leaflets, court forms and web information for the public and court users. We will work closely with the Forced Marriage Unit to ensure that this guidance is consistent with its guidelines on forced marriages.
	The noble Baroness also asked about training for community and voluntary organisations. The Forced Marriage Unit already provides training on forced marriages to statutory agencies and voluntary organisations as part of its awareness-raising remit. My department will liaise with the unit on how the provisions in the Bill should be communicated, as part of both the implementation programme for the Bill and the unit's existing awareness-raising programme. The noble Baroness also asked about the police. As she will know, domestic violence crime and hate crimes are generally handled by police community safety units, and we anticipate that forced marriages will be dealt with in the same way. She also asked me whether the guidance would be mandatory for police forces. Training on forced marriages is already delivered to police forces across the UK. Therefore, it already is in existence across the system.
	Finally, because this might be the last time on which I speak, I want to pay tribute to all those—

Lord Russell-Johnston: My Lords, before the Minister reaches her valedictory, perhaps she will say something about the circulation of information in schools, which the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, mentioned. I know to some extent that is already done, but it is sometimes sporadic. I recall that when I raised honour killings, a number of voluntary organisations came to me and said that it was not done as well or as continuously as it should be.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, one of the statistics that has stayed with me during my discussions with organisations on this legislation was that in 2006 the Crown Prosecution Service reported that 250 girls aged 13 to 16 did not return to the school roll in Bradford after an extended period of absence during the summer holidays. Some of those would have been due to perfectly legitimate reasons, such as moving house. But the noble Lord will know why that statistic particularly struck me. I have no doubt of the importance of schools.
	One issue raised by the victims of forced marriages to whom I spoke was the need to be able to talk to their friends and perhaps to people who they felt they could trust who are outside their own communities. It will be no surprise to the noble Lord that after victims, the highest percentage of those who call the Forced Marriage Unit helpline are teachers in schools. I could not agree more with the thrust of what the noble Lord is saying. Schools and education are critical. We need to discuss with our colleagues in the Department for Education and Skills how best we achieve that. It will be a combination of the citizenship programme and the opportunity to deliver, as we do on domestic violence already, these issues as part of the curriculum. It will be about offering advice and support to teachers who come across this, which is part of the guidance of the Forced Marriage Unit and its work right across the system. It will also be about the opportunities to make sure all young people are aware of this problem, so that those who may be victims, or those whose friends may be victims, know what to do and who to turn to. Again, I could not agree more. The Forced Marriage Unit speaks to schools extremely regularly. It is a combination of all those things. I take that point very seriously and I hope that I have addressed it.
	With permission, I am on my valedictory now. I want to pay tribute to my team, which has been nothing short of magnificent. We have all worked together across your Lordships' House because this is such an important issue to deal with. It has been extremely important for me. I have learnt a huge amount. This is incredibly important legislation, but more than anything for me, this is the House of Lords at its best.

Lord Dholakia: My Lords, before the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, responds to the amendment, I wish to add thanks from this Front Bench to my noble friend Lord Lester for the effort he has made. Five or six years ago, when I first joined the forced marriage working party at the Home Office, it was easy to identify the problem but one had no idea of the solutions. I am delighted that with his help, the help of so many external organisations and the contributions made by the Minister and the Opposition, we are now proceeding. If I am right, it must be a record that a Private Member's Bill should be taken over by the Government in the other place. Let us hope that before long, it will be on the statute book. All those who have participated can take a tremendous pride in trying to solve a very complex social problem.

Baroness Verma: My Lords, I thank the Minister for her detailed and reassuring response. I should also like to thank the Bill team for the work they have put into making this Bill workable. I join the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, in saying that today is a very happy occasion. We are sending this Bill to another place in a well-founded and healthy condition.
	I end on a certain note. We use the term "honour killings", but there is no honour in killing. I always find the phrase very difficult to accept. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lester, for introducing the Bill and I am reassured that the whole House has supported it from the start, even though we have had some difficulties in getting to where we are now. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	Schedule 1 [Protection against forced marriage: Northern Ireland]:

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: moved Amendments Nos. 6 and 7:
	Schedule 1, page 12, line 15, leave out "deciding" and insert "ascertaining"
	Schedule 1, page 13, line 4, leave out from "who" to "marriage" in line 11 and insert "are, or may become, involved in other respects as well as (or instead of) respondents who force or attempt to force, or may force or attempt to force, a person to enter into a marriage;
	(c) other persons who are, or may become, involved in other respects as well as respondents of any kind.
	(3) For the purposes of sub-paragraph (2) examples of involvement in other respects are—
	(a) aiding, abetting, counselling, procuring, encouraging or assisting another person to force, or to attempt to force, a person to enter into a marriage; or(b) conspiring to force, or to attempt to force, a person to enter into a"
	On Question, amendments agreed to.
	House adjourned at 7.30 pm.